WEBVTT
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Welcome to the podcast, Nancy.
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I hope you're well.
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How are you?
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I'm very well, thank you.
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You look excellent.
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I love the outfit, especially the boots.
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Nancy, uh this podcast recording is gonna be a little bit different potentially to what you're used to.
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All our audiences are used to, because I'm sure that you are approached a lot of the time around who you are as a professional.
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But I always do like to interview guests, professionals, and understand a little bit about their personal upbringing, their bit of their personal life, just so that we can feel and understand who you, Nancy Doyle, is.
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Is that alright?
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Yeah, that's absolutely grand.
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In speaking to you before and in getting to know you a little bit, I know that you're very unfiltered, which I love.
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It's helpful for podcasts.
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It is, it is, it is.
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If you don't mind, just provide a brief overview into your upbringing.
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What was the world of Nancy like?
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Mixed.
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Um, so my my dad is a builder from New Jersey who left um New Jersey in the 70s to uh as a protest and a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
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So he came over to this country and um was working on a building site in Oxford and wandered into Balliol College, Oxford, one day, covered in cement, and said, What do you dad, what do you gotta do to go here?
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To some Don.
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Um, and anyway, cut a very long story short, ended up doing um a philosophy degree and an MPhil in um politics and philosophy.
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And so for my life growing up, he was part-time teaching philosophy and politics in Southampton and part-time carried on as a builder.
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Okay, so it's a very interesting intersection of middle class and working class values, uh, language, approach, style.
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My mother is from a sort of very quiet suburb of Berkshire, so obviously that was quite a quite a match or mismatch, I should say.
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No, they're not any longer together.
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And um, and I've got two younger sisters who are absolutely chamasing, and my my ride or die sisters, in fact, it actually says that on the back of this, that they gave me for my 50th birthday, ride or die sisters.
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Um, so with all that, I I think the the biggest standout feature of my childhood is that um I was uh a professional truant.
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And when I say professional, um at the age of 12 when I went to secondary school, um I resolved to never give the school a genuine letter from my mother so that they never had a copy of her handwriting to compare any letters to.
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Oh, okay.
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So I was I was ready and prepped for truanting at that point, and um when I was 14 um I had quite an intense period of mental distress, and after that I basically didn't go to school again.
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Um, I used to go on a Monday and collect my work from my teachers, go home and do it, which is uh a reasonable adjustment for what was then absolutely undiagnosed ADHD.
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Um, which, you know, being a Gen X woman, you you don't get ADHD as a diagnosis as a child unless you're violent, basically, in that era, and and I and I wasn't violent, um, I was withdrawn.
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Um but yeah, so so I think that adjustment was both a blessing and a curse, you know.
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I mean, I I didn't enjoy education until I did my PhD.
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It was always a means to an end at that point.
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I I left home at 16 and and started working in um uh care homes for adults with learning disabilities.
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Um, and I found work the antidote to school, which is not always true for people.
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A lot of times, if you hate school, you hate work.
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I hated school, I loved work.
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So I had this kind of mission, if you like, to kind of make work as inclusive as possible so that more people could have that experience because I would see around me all the time the effects of people who hated school, and mostly they were neurodivergent.
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Um, and so that kind of absence from school period was distressing, it was isolating, it was it wasn't great socially.
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Um, I don't I absolutely was was very psychiatrically distressed at that point, and um and it wasn't a great era for me, but I also see it as a point of privilege, actually, because if you think about that arrangement, going into school, getting my work and being allowed to take it home, with no one giving my parents a hard time.
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Well, do you know if that isn't white privilege, I don't know what it is, but also a privilege of the time, you know, the era.
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There's no way that that I would be able to do that now.
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And this was in the UK?
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Yeah, that was in the UK, it was in Southampton, in in kind of you know, a city school in Southampton.
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There's lots to unpick there already.
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You know, um, from your perspective, when you're very reflective, as I know you are, you said it was a blessing and a curse.
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You were able to see others who were similar to yourself in terms of their approach, hating school, loving work.
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Were you aware of just hating school and hadn't realized that work was something you could live, you could love, you know?
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Potentially because of the age in which they were.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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Yeah, or their backgrounds.
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Do you know?
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Yeah.
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Thinking about that now, what would you say would be the biggest lessons that propelled you for the career that you were about to have?
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Um, I think that the major one is the waste of human potential.
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So when I left home at 16 and I was kind of living in bed sits and I was living with um a collection of people uh who I've recently started seeing um in various guises.
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And you know, I feel so lucky that I met that group of people.
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I was a very vulnerable young woman, and I could have met any group of people at 16, 17.
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And actually, what I met was a group of fairly neurodivergent misfits who were all struggling in their own way, but were all really safe, uh, solid people, and I do feel very grateful for them actually.
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But you know, a lot of them were struggling, a lot of them were trying and failing to do A-levels, trying and failing to start jobs, and but I could see around me how much intellect and how much creativity and how much talent there was in that group of people, and I I enjoyed the heck out of them.
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Um, and I'm not very tolerant, do you know?
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So, you know, they were they were they were yeah, they were a thrive, they could have been a thriving bunch, and I just used to sort of think, you know, why can't that why can't you find a way through into a job that suits you, you know, and and what what could we do with you?
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What could we do with this with this writing ability you've got, this sculpture sculpture ability that you've got, this this musical talent that you've got.
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Um, so yeah, frustration, I think, at the number of people who just did not have any way to get a career path.
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And and and what what's going on in our schools that people leave feeling like they've got nothing to offer when they do.
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That is still the case today.
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It's it's at it's actually worse today, I think.
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Genuinely, I think it's worse.
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Yeah.
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You were, as you mentioned earlier on, uh going through some mental challenges at a very young age.
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You left home at a very young age, you were working at a very young age.
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They're challenges that adults have, and the burden of that, dealing with that, I can only assume, because I don't know if I can't diagnose myself in terms of having mental health issues per se.
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However, as a young teenager, I can imagine it might have been exciting and scary and challenging, all within the same ball of emotion.
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Tell me about your educational journey because I know what you are today in terms of your qualifications, but if you don't mind, just give a very quick run-through in terms of you know, someone who actually was truant in from school who you know crafted a letter from mum, provided it's a teachers.
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The odds should be against you.
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I know in terms of you know, if you're holistically looking at your profile, but you made it work.
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So, what qualifications do you have?
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So, um, with that approach, I actually got six A's, two B's, and a C at GCSE.
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Okay.
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So that's a decent collection of GCSE.
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But what we're not saying to our listeners is to leave school and you know, at 14 years of age, get your homework.
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It was right for you.
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It was absolutely right for me.
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And I imagine that there are lots of other teenagers that it's right for right now who are not able to have that, who are struggling.
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Um, a lot of their parents will be homeschooling them now, they'll be official homeschoolers.
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That's that's probably a possibility these days.
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Um so I do, you know, I was interviewed by someone who was doing a PhD on post-traumatic growth, and uh he was trying to say to me, What, you know, what was it the school could have done that would have allowed you to participate in the school?
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And I was just like, not be a school.
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There isn't anything.
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Um, but anyway, so I so I did manage to get some decent GCSEs, and then I started eight different A levels over four different years.
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So I, you know, I just started them as like, now I can't be bothered, don't like this, started again.
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No, I don't like this, can't be other don't.
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I managed to get myself onto an art A level without having an art GCSE.
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Um, I started classics, I started uh sociology, I started uh English, French, a whole bunch of things.
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Um and so over a four-year period, I didn't finish any of them.
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And then I went to another thing that doesn't exist anymore, so that privilege of the era that I lived in, um, the Connections Career Centres.
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Do you remember them?
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No.
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Okay, well, they were these things and they were just offices, and you could just walk in and chat to someone about education and career options.
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So I just literally walked in there at the age of 19 and said, I want to go to university, I want to do psychology, I'm fed up with meeting psychologists that don't know what they're doing, they're all useless.
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I need to go and study this thing and find out what it is that they know so that I can argue with them.
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And the lady said to me, Well, you can either wait till next September and do an access course, or could you finish any of those A levels that you started?
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So I was like, I could probably finish English and French.
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So I did that, and then I got a place at Middlesex University to do psychology, and I was so sure I was going to fail those A levels anyway.
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I was like, I mean, I'd finished them in three months as a correspondence course, and I was like, this is not gonna go well.
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So um over the summer I skipped town.
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I went to New York so that I wasn't around when the results came out.
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Yeah.
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Um uh and went to New York and lived in New York for a year, but I did get into university and um with a D and an E.
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Wow.
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I know that's called the gift of the gab, folks.
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But um uh, but yeah, so I did get in and I just enjoyed staying in New York anyway.
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Um, came back because I was the last year of grant assisted study.
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I know.
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Again, do you know?
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I'm just like I know I couldn't justify hanging out in New York when I could get a degree for free.
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I was like, that's just silly.
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So I went, came back, went to London, did my degree, and from then on I would say I was on a pretty even track, actually, career-wise.
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That's probably where I really started to sort stuff out.
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And I went from I went into psychology like most people do, thinking that I wanted to do clinical psychology.
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Um, and about halfway through the degree, I was like, nah, I can't do that.
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I I I can't work for the NHS, and that's the only way to train as a clinical psychologist.
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You have to work for the NHS.
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I can't work for the NHS, it will be the ruin of me.
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I will spend my entire time fighting the system and I I will, it will, it will break me.
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Um, there was at the time you couldn't get sponsorship to be a clinical psychologist if you were over, I think the ages was about 26, 27.
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Um, and I just thought how short-sighted that was because I realized I didn't have enough experience to do what I wanted to do.
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What I wanted to do was to help young people like me who were struggling in school, who were struggling with various kinds of traumas, what I now know to be neurodivergence, um mental distress.
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And what I realized in that degree is that I had no experience of parenting.
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And when you've got young people, if you don't understand what's happening for their parents, you cannot help them.
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It's too easy to get into a rescuer position and to, you know, be on their side and see it, you know, to be drawn into that battle.
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And I thought I would rather become a parent, live my life, and then go and do it.
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And there was no route to do that.
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So that just made me even more dismissive of the whole profession, really.
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I was like, so what is this?
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This is an profession entirely staffed by well-meaning middle-class white girls that have no experience.
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Like, how is this as a profession going to succeed?
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I am pleased to tell you that it is much more diverse now, and they have changed a lot of those rules, and things have moved on tremendously in clinical psychology.
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But also in that degree, I did the occupational psychology module, which is the psychology of work, the psychology of careers, of ambition, of work performance, of motivation, of uh organizational culture, of um methods of assessment and uh training and development and lifelong learning.
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And I was like, ooh, I kind of like this.
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Um, and I nailed it, I got first without even trying, you know, and I was like, that's it, that's that's what I'm gonna do.
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Well, that's interesting because think about what you said earlier on when you went to work in the care homes when you saw others and you wanted to give, you wanted to support, roughly seven, eight years later down the line.
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It's coming together.
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Yeah, so I did the occupational psychology masters and then I did my chartership as an occupational psychologist.
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Um, so I finished that in 2004 or five.
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Um, and my first early jobs in the early 2000s, I worked for access to work, so I would do disability uh workplace needs assessments and recommending adjustments for people.
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Um, the DWP used to pay for diagnosis at that time as well, would you believe?
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So I used to do a lot of dyslexia and dyspraxia diagnoses and later ADHD as well.
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Um, and then I also trained as a coach because um I was doing some other work with people who were long-term unemployed with a lot of really good coaches, and I kind of fell in love with coaching as a method of support.
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I personally started to get more personal development out of coaching than I ever had had out of support from clinical psychologists.
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So I was like, actually, there's something in this coaching stuff.
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Um, and so I carried on with the coaching and um and then kind of genius within sort of my business sort of grew out of that, uh, initially mainly focused on coaching because I kept kept recommending coaching for people as part of an assessment and then just hoping that they'd get a good coach.
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Yeah, and then thinking, nah, I need to be providing this.
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I know a ton of good coaches, let me get this sorted.
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Um, yeah.
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So there are a number of coaches, professionals who are great at having the gifts of the gap, inspiring, motivating from your journey, having understood education, having experienced the highs and the lows, what are your thoughts in regards to having the actual qualification to carry out the work that someone in your circumstance is doing currently?
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Is it important to have the paperwork?
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It's important to do due diligence to your craft.
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Um and there are a number of different ways of doing that.
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So you know, I think with with coaching, there's no there's no one qualification that is perfect, you know.
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Um there's lots of different routes into coaching.
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You can do a level three in coaching, you can do a level five in coaching, you can do a level seven in coaching, you can do a coaching master's degree, you know, there's lots of ways you can get into it.
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Um, and you can do some things that aren't regulated at all.
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And I would say I probably learned more out of those um sessions than anything else.
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There's a there's a stream, there's a strand of coaching, which is also a therapeutic strand called uh clean language and symbolic modelling, which I dedicated myself to for about five or six years, and I probably learned more out of that than any of my formal qualifications.
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Um, but one of the things that you learn out of a formal qualification and out of a professional training process is around things like your competence to practice.
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So the point at which you say, Do you know what, this is beyond me, and I now need to refer you on.
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So you know you know you start to learn what your limits are and work to those.
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Um, you get challenged on your own stuff.
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Um, so you you need to be challenged on your own stuff if you're gonna do people work, you need to know where your boundaries are, and because it particularly if you have lived experience.
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So I would say if you have lived experience, that's even more important because you're gonna meet clients who are gonna trigger you.
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They're gonna be like you, they're gonna have had similar things to you, and it's it's difficult to not get drawn into that emotionally.
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You have to know that that's gonna happen, you have to prepare for it, you have to have supervision groups, people where you can go to bounce that off, and you have to know when it's too much for you and you have to refer that person on.
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And I think that stuff's overlooked in a lot of the kind of oh, have a six-week certificate in ADHD coaching.
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Like people aren't taking care of that.
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And in my community, in neurodiversity, neurodivergent people are vulnerable.
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We're much more likely to have PTSD than the general population.
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Um, we've been ostracised, discriminated against, we think we have no value, we're worried about our careers, we're worried about our livelihoods.
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Can we put a roof over our heads?
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Because will we ever manage to hold down a job more than two years, six months, whatever it might be?
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So that level of vulnerability requires due diligence and it requires safeguarding and support structures.
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So I wouldn't say that you have to do a qualification, but what I would say is you have to do that.
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Thank you.
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This discussion um we have to cover a community which you've already mentioned you're part of and very proud to be a part of.
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You smile whenever we talk about it.
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And I know also that it frustrates you a little bit as well, but we'll get into that a little bit later.
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A bit of a loaded question for you now.
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Why is neurodiversity so important to you?
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Um again, it goes back to that wasted potential.
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Um in my PhD thesis, I did a my PhD was later.
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I didn't do it until my late 30s, early 40s.
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I finished it when I was 42.
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Um, but when I was finishing it, my supervisor said to me, you know, most people run out of steam in their last chapter, Nancy.
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You need to finish it with a bang.
00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:10.240
You need a couple of really strong sentences right at the end to just top it off.
00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:20.960
And the sentence I chose was that um inclusion is a moral, social, and economic imperative, and we all lose when human potential is squandered.
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:23.279
Um, and I I really believe that.
00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:28.000
I believe that the the human species is diverse for a reason.
00:20:28.319 --> 00:20:33.519
It makes sense to have people that are specialist in one or two areas.
00:20:33.839 --> 00:20:38.960
Um, and you know, what we've got naturally occurring in the human species is neurodiversity.
00:20:39.119 --> 00:20:43.039
So we've got a bunch of people, two-thirds of people, are average.
00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:45.599
They are competent at most things.
00:20:45.680 --> 00:20:54.880
Um, they'll have strengths and weaknesses, but they're much of a muchness, they're falling within a you know, a range of the average ability or uh tendency.
00:20:55.279 --> 00:20:58.720
And then we've got some people with these big spiky profiles, like myself.
00:20:59.039 --> 00:21:07.839
So I've got a very high uh IQ for visual spatial reasoning and much, much lower for working memory.
00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:11.440
How did it feel when this was presented to you?
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:12.799
What that I have that.
00:21:12.960 --> 00:21:13.119
Yeah.
00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:17.119
So when well I didn't get diagnosed until I was 38, which is ridiculous.
00:21:17.279 --> 00:21:18.720
I mean, I've just told you my history, right?
00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:21.680
Didn't go to school, started eight A levels, only finished two.
00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:25.119
Like if that isn't textbook ADHD, I don't know what is.
00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:32.240
Um, but so by the time I I had this experience, I already knew the field.
00:21:32.400 --> 00:21:32.640
Yes.
00:21:32.799 --> 00:21:42.720
So I was going into this knowing I had a spiky profile, knowing that this was likely to have some um, you know, some big differences between strengths and challenges.
00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:47.359
And so I think it's an I don't think I'm a good example of that.
00:21:47.599 --> 00:22:00.960
But I have diagnosed hundreds of people, and the typical response is that people are massively reassured to discover their strengths because that's the bit that nobody Talks about.
00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:07.279
So a neurodivergent person coming for diagnosis as an adult will know what they struggle with.
00:22:07.359 --> 00:22:16.079
They'll be able to tell you the things they can't do because it will have been pointed out to them over and over and over again in the education system or in the workplace, you know.
00:22:16.319 --> 00:22:24.960
And so when you do that assessment and you you feed back the things that they're good at, that's the conversation for me in the diagnosis.
00:22:25.119 --> 00:22:27.839
That's the bit, that's where you can reinstall hope.
00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:46.480
You can get people to start appreciating the things they've been taking for granted and saying, you know, I know just as an example, um, I once assessed a policeman and he was in the top 3% for verbal skills, okay, and the bottom 10% for working memory.
00:22:46.559 --> 00:22:50.079
So he so he was, you know, he was struggling with attention, concentration.
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:55.039
Working memory is kind of how many tabs you can have open in your mind before you start to crash.
00:22:55.359 --> 00:22:56.880
So can you hold three or four things?
00:22:57.039 --> 00:22:59.039
Can you hold seven or eight things at any one time?
00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:00.000
His is quite low.
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:01.599
It was like, you know, three or four things.
00:23:01.759 --> 00:23:03.279
So he already knew about that.
00:23:03.359 --> 00:23:11.119
Um, and when I said he was in the top three percent for verbal comprehension, we started talking about what that meant in in regards to policing.
00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:28.640
In and I was like, it's this will affect your ability to interview, this will affect your ability to build rapport, to speak to people in the street and get to know them, to build an understanding with the community that you're policing, um, to find the right words at the right moment to um uh support a victim.
00:23:28.799 --> 00:23:31.839
And he was like, Oh, I am really good at that.
00:23:32.079 --> 00:23:35.440
And I'm like, Yeah, I can I can see that you'd be really, really good at that.
00:23:35.599 --> 00:23:37.599
And you know, he was taking that for granted.
00:23:37.680 --> 00:23:47.359
What he was hyper focused on the difficulties he had writing up notes accurately, the difficulties he had inputting stuff into the into the date, inputting data.
00:23:47.680 --> 00:24:02.000
And so drawing that focus back to here's your strength, here's the thing that you do, and and that's what takes me back to why neurodiversity is so important, because neurodivergent people have we have different and diverse strengths.
00:24:02.160 --> 00:24:18.160
And if you think about a community of humans in our evolutionary state, so go back tens of thousands of years, you've got a a tribe, a group of about 150 people, it makes absolute sense for 5% of them to be ADHDers.
00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:22.079
We're curious, we don't sit still, we're hyper-vigilant.
00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:26.559
So while everyone else is chatting around the fire, we're like, What's happening here?
00:24:26.799 --> 00:24:27.200
What's going on?
00:24:27.279 --> 00:24:27.440
Yeah.
00:24:27.599 --> 00:24:29.039
Should we go and look over that next hill?
00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:30.079
Let's go and see what's over there.
00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:31.279
Ooh, antelope.
00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:36.640
You know, so if all of us were like that, it would be bedlam.
00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:39.839
But for a minority of us to be like that, brilliant.
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:48.559
And then you've got kind of 10% of the population who are dyslexic, who don't read and write, but that's not a that's not an evolved skill, is it?
00:24:48.720 --> 00:24:51.119
And it's also increasingly not needed.
00:24:51.200 --> 00:24:56.559
Um, but dyslexics are very often really good at visual spatial reasoning and mechanical reasoning.
00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:02.880
So when when the ADHD has gone and found the antelope, the dyslexics will come and build a bridge over the river.
00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:10.400
And meanwhile, the autists who haven't been speaking to anybody, they've just been sitting around the fire to the side, you know, carefully sharpening something.
00:25:10.640 --> 00:25:13.039
Oh, they've invented a spear, you know.
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:21.039
So there's this sort of naturalness to human diversity, which is powerful.
00:25:21.599 --> 00:25:24.319
And we've lost it in the industrial revolution.
00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:34.559
We've we've we've created systems where we wanted everybody to be the same, we wanted humans to be automatons so that we could be part of a production line, and it doesn't work.
00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:39.839
You you exclude too many people from work and life and society like that.
00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:41.759
So that's why it's important to me.
00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:45.519
We need every ounce of human intelligence to get through the next 50 years.
00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:59.039
Agreed, and you know, the way in which you presented those examples there, you know, everyone, everyone who you speak to or everyone who's listening to this will think of scenarios, I'm sure, of what they've experienced.
00:25:59.519 --> 00:26:04.480
You know, I think about when I used to be in school myself a number of years ago.
00:26:05.839 --> 00:26:07.519
It was an all-boys grammar school.
00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:10.160
Yeah, ex-grammar school.
00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:31.839
However, in the canteen at break and lunch times, you would have the blacks in one corner, the Asians in another corner, the Greebos in one corner, the skateboarders in the middle, and anyone else of sorts who found themselves liking each other in another corner.
00:26:32.240 --> 00:26:36.640
And they all stayed within their groups every single day.
00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:45.839
We then go on a trip to Poland, you know, all on a coach for 36 hours from Northamptonshire, where I grew up.
00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:52.880
And you think about why those trips were so great, is because not everybody was the same.
00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:54.240
Yeah.
00:26:54.480 --> 00:27:21.759
It the stories that you'd be able to laugh, discuss, where actually the bonding takes place, knowing that this black ADHD student actually was going out with a white, dyslexic woman or girl at the time, and where they found that balance, that that joy, the excitement, it's in the people.
00:27:22.319 --> 00:27:24.799
But everyone's skill sets and actions are very different.
00:27:25.519 --> 00:27:44.799
What I love is how obviously you being a professional, how you articulate this so that those who aren't aware, and this is why we're doing this, because I wanted to reach out to those who aren't aware, who don't know, who might be wondering, it's in a similar light, it's in a similar vein.
00:27:45.519 --> 00:27:55.200
Um, you know, neurodiversity is something which is huge now, for some reason, over the last five to eight years, has just spiked.
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:58.079
Everyone's saying, This is the space to be a part of.
00:27:58.400 --> 00:28:01.599
This is the people, these are the discussions you need to be having.
00:28:02.319 --> 00:28:05.920
And it's been both brilliant and not brilliant in many ways, actually.
00:28:06.079 --> 00:28:16.160
I mean, I I'm I'm a I'm a small drop in that wave of making that happen with the BBC documentaries that I made in 2017, 2018, the things that I've written.
00:28:16.319 --> 00:28:22.400
There's a there's you know, there's quite a few people that have brought neurodiversity awareness into the public space.
00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:43.839
Um, and I think, you know, I there's been there was the explosion in not just neurodiversity, but DEI, particularly uh racial injustice awareness in the 2020-2021 era, and then the snapback has been absolutely ferocious.
00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.839
And I think the neurodiversity snapback has taken a bit longer.
00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:51.839
It's it's it's just coming now, but it's coming.
00:28:52.079 --> 00:29:03.119
So I think with all inclusion movements, you see these these kind of inflection points where it looks like suddenly some change is gonna happen, and then there's this retrenchment, isn't there?
00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:14.160
And it's having watched this space for 25 years, I um I'm not reassured at the moment that that things are gonna be fine, actually.
00:29:14.799 --> 00:29:20.079
You're a you're a writer, you do um you do some great writing.
00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:22.640
Um, I've read a number of your articles.
00:29:23.359 --> 00:29:41.680
And something that you wrote in one of your articles, quote, if we really want truly new inclusive workplaces, places where talent thrives rather than stalls, we need to dial back the parenting and return agency to neurodivergent adults.
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:45.119
Talk to me about that.
00:29:45.599 --> 00:29:48.559
So that's the current trend that I'm seeing.
00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:53.359
So prior to the awareness, we had a lot of discrimination.
00:29:53.519 --> 00:29:57.839
We had a lot of uh, well, in my day, people weren't dyslexic, they were just thick.
00:29:58.160 --> 00:30:02.319
You know, in my day, kids didn't have ADHD, they were just naughty, they need to be disciplined, you know.
00:30:02.400 --> 00:30:03.440
You had all of that.
00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:06.400
And people would vocalize that quite openly.
00:30:06.559 --> 00:30:08.720
And I think in some spaces they still do.
00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:10.079
That's not gone away.
00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:12.640
Um, but it's quieter than it was.
00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:15.920
Uh, no one was interested in the strengths of neurodivergent people.
00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:20.319
I used to have to kick people's doors down to get them to think about spiky profiles.
00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:39.519
Um, but what I do see happening that's problematic now is um managers who are very well-meaning, who want who support the idea of inclusion and neurodiversity, but who don't know how to support neurodivergent people to thrive.
00:30:39.599 --> 00:30:42.160
So what they will do instead is take over.
00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:50.720
So if they've got someone who's struggling with a certain task, let's say it's a report that has to be written once a week, they'll start doing that report for them.
00:30:51.119 --> 00:31:07.759
They, if they've got someone who is struggling to regulate their emotions and does kind of overspill, uh, quite sort of direct, unpleasant language, you know, is quite rude to people, they think that they're not allowed to talk about that.
00:31:07.839 --> 00:31:12.960
So they'll just sort of let that person carry on doing it and they'll tell everyone that they just have to suck it up.
00:31:13.359 --> 00:31:19.119
And what that's doing is robbing neurodivergent people of the opportunity to learn.
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:29.680
And what happens is when that manager runs out of steam because they've been covering, um, that neurodivergent person is left out on a limb.
00:31:29.839 --> 00:31:34.480
All of a sudden the expectations change and they don't have those skills.
00:31:34.559 --> 00:31:38.720
So we're de-skilling neurodivergent people by not believing in them.
00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:43.119
There's there's nothing about being neurodivergent that doesn't mean you can't learn to meet deadlines.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:52.079
There's nothing about being dyslexic that means that assistive technology can't get you to write a report as as fluently and quickly as someone who isn't dyslexic.
00:31:52.720 --> 00:31:57.039
Um I'm I'm a neurodivergent woman, I've had to learn how to manage my emotions.
00:31:57.200 --> 00:32:02.559
I wouldn't be running an organization with 200 people in it if I couldn't manage my emotions.
00:32:03.119 --> 00:32:05.440
We have we have the ability to learn.
00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:14.400
The adjustment is that you help us and you don't blame us for not already being able to do those things, not that you lower the standards for us.
00:32:14.559 --> 00:32:18.559
And so what I'm seeing is a lot of lowering of standards for neurodivergent people.
00:32:18.640 --> 00:32:28.079
I've I actually heard in a workshop an HR, a senior HR professional says to said to me, How much unprofessional behaviour do I have to accept in order to be neuroinclusive?
00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:29.680
Well, I see your eyebrows.
00:32:29.759 --> 00:32:30.400
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:33.920
Now we can have a long conversation about what you call unprofessional, you know.
00:32:34.079 --> 00:32:43.680
I mean, one person's micromanagement is another person's support, one person's direct is another person's rude, one person's polite is another person's insincere.
00:32:43.839 --> 00:32:46.960
There's, you know, there's there's nuance to all of this.
00:32:47.200 --> 00:32:50.960
But do you have to accept unprofessional behavior to be inclusive?
00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:51.759
No.
00:32:52.559 --> 00:33:06.480
Um, what you should do is you should give that person the benefit of the doubt, and you should um assume that they're not trying to be malicious or malevolent or um aggressive or you know, lazy or any of those things.
00:33:06.799 --> 00:33:11.440
But what you should do is help them and say, okay, so I can see you're struggling with this.
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:12.960
What can we do to support you?
00:33:13.200 --> 00:33:20.799
You see all that good stuff you do over there, great, we want more of that, but we can see that you really struggle with planning and prioritising your workload.
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:22.720
So, how do we support you with that?
00:33:22.960 --> 00:33:27.200
Managers can give some support, coaches are there for exactly that sort of thing.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:34.640
And and so I think that's my fear at the moment is the infantilisation of neurodivergent people.
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:52.640
And I think it probably has um parallels to uh the, you know, we, you know, in terms when I think about the anti-racist work that happened uh in 21-22, we saw a lot of white saviorism, and I think it's got parallels to that.
00:33:53.519 --> 00:33:54.720
So it's it's that stage.
00:33:54.799 --> 00:33:58.079
And what it says to me, this isn't this is an immature conversation.
00:33:58.319 --> 00:34:15.840
This the neurodiversity conversation is at a stage of maturity where people want to help, but in helping they're taking over and they're diminishing the ability of neurodivergent people to take responsibility for themselves, to be agent, to be empowered.
00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:20.079
So, on that, on the back of that, two points.
00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:30.719
What there are a number of managers who manage professionals in their team who would like to be able to do what you've just advised.
00:34:32.320 --> 00:34:33.440
However, there's a fear.
00:34:33.840 --> 00:34:34.159
There is.
00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:35.119
Okay.
00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:37.840
Now that's okay.
00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:42.480
How you address that and how you present yourself, that's how you deal with that.
00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:54.000
However, what do you say to a the managers in terms of dealing with these professionals who have identified as being neurodivergent?
00:34:54.400 --> 00:35:01.280
And also, second to that, from a company's perspective, what what would you advise to companies?
00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:09.360
You've already mentioned, for example, having coaches, but not all companies want to invest in professionals to support the business, to support the people.
00:35:09.760 --> 00:35:11.599
So, what would you say to that?
00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:15.440
No, well, I I am I know you've got plenty you can say.
00:35:15.599 --> 00:35:16.960
Yeah, I've got plenty I can say.
00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:31.920
Well, first of all, on the point of coaching and not wanting to invest, if you're in a very small business and you can't afford to provide coaching for your um neurodivergent or other other um otherwise disabled uh employees, that's what access to work is for.
00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:36.079
So access to work is a government-funded DWP program.
00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:43.840
Uh, you apply for support with adjustments that are unaffordable by your business.
00:35:44.079 --> 00:35:47.360
They'll give you a free assessment and they'll recommend things for you.
00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:50.480
Um, and then if your business is small enough, they'll pay for those things.
00:35:51.119 --> 00:35:52.960
So access to work does exist.
00:35:53.119 --> 00:36:05.840
And for people that are wondering what to do with their budget, what I would say to you is that the average coaching program comes in at less than a grand, and the average cost of rehiring is a heck of a lot more than a grand.
00:36:06.639 --> 00:36:37.360
And the the cost, it's all the hit, you know, it's it's a hard ask because you're comparing a direct cost with an indirect cost or a hidden cost, but the hidden cost sort of underperformance, the hidden cost not just to that person, but to their manager who's trying to cover up, or the rest of their team who's trying to cover up, what that does to relationships, to sense of what's fair and what's not fair, to trust, to honest communication and psychological safety within those teams, that's an issue.
00:36:37.519 --> 00:36:41.519
Now, for the want of a few hundred quid, we could pretty much solve that problem.
00:36:41.840 --> 00:36:46.639
Um, 95% of uh Genius Within's coaching clients keep their jobs.
00:36:46.800 --> 00:36:53.599
And I never want that to be 100%, because 5% of them leave because they should, they're in the wrong job, and that's actually a good outcome.
00:36:53.840 --> 00:37:00.320
If someone leaves elegantly because through coaching they've realized they're in the wrong job, I consider that a win.
00:37:00.639 --> 00:37:04.480
Um, and 25% of our clients get promoted within a year.
00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:10.719
Our NPS score for coaching is is 89%.
00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:17.760
I don't know if you know what an NPS score is, but that is like you know, 70% is considered world class.
00:37:17.920 --> 00:37:18.320
Yeah.
00:37:18.559 --> 00:37:23.360
So coaching works when it's done properly, it's not massively expensive.
00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:25.519
There you can invest in it.
00:37:25.679 --> 00:37:30.000
And and also there are a lot of managers that are naturally very good coaches.
00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:51.920
So those principles of coaching, um, I created a digital platform called the Genius Finder, which is a psychometric self-assessment of functional everyday work performance that lets you work out your spiky profile from a from an everyday perspective, not from an IQ perspective, but just from a what do I find easy, what do I find hard?
00:37:52.079 --> 00:38:01.599
And then in that platform are all the kind of coaching exercises, developmental tasks that I would give clients to help them develop that skill that they're missing.
00:38:01.760 --> 00:38:15.280
So I've created something that's quite affordable and accessible that you can work through on your own as a and or with a manager to kind of give those guardrails to managers of what they can and can't talk about, what they could and couldn't suggest.
00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:24.559
So I'm trying to sort of open that access because I do recognise that not everyone can afford coaching and not everyone can go through the paperwork of ADHD.
00:38:24.639 --> 00:38:28.559
But but I I think you know there's stuff out there, is what I'm saying.
00:38:28.719 --> 00:38:30.079
There's stuff out there.
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:48.239
You have served in many different types of positions from training manager, operations manager, director, section editor, writer, professor, managing director, chief science officer, CEO, founder?
00:38:51.599 --> 00:39:10.719
My question to you is with the world that you live in, the jobs day to day, how does Nancy hold herself accountable when diagnosed as being neurodivergent managing so many people?
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:14.320
How do I hold myself accountable?
00:39:19.119 --> 00:39:20.960
Lots of different ways, really.
00:39:21.119 --> 00:39:23.199
I don't I mean, I don't think we're ever finished.
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:24.880
We're always in process, right?
00:39:25.599 --> 00:39:27.039
You live in process.
00:39:27.679 --> 00:39:36.559
So I don't think there's ever been a point in my professional career where I wasn't in some sort of coaching and or therapy, you know?
00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:50.400
Um, and within my business, we've very much set it up in a kind of shared leadership style.
00:39:50.639 --> 00:40:00.480
So rather than one person being the boss and their word goes, there's a sense of this is more your sort of style issue.
00:40:00.639 --> 00:40:01.920
What do you think we should do here?
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:07.679
You know, so I'll just my my longest standing business partner is Fiona, and she's a very different personality to me.
00:40:08.079 --> 00:40:14.800
Fiona is someone who likes to take a long time over decisions, but once she's made a decision, she very rarely changes her mind.
00:40:15.039 --> 00:40:19.360
I make decisions very, very quickly, and I can change my mind quite quickly.
00:40:19.599 --> 00:40:26.880
So between us, what's happened is we've learned to respect each other's differences, and and I think that's the important thing.
00:40:27.039 --> 00:40:31.119
So, I mean, if anyone's gonna respect diversity of thought, it's gonna be me, right?
00:40:31.199 --> 00:40:32.639
So I've got to walk that talk.
00:40:32.880 --> 00:40:36.960
And that means respecting the fact that Fiona makes decisions very differently to me.
00:40:37.119 --> 00:40:41.679
When we first started working together, um, I would ask her a question and then she wouldn't get back to me.
00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:44.079
And I'd be like, come on, Fiona, I'll be chasing her.
00:40:44.639 --> 00:40:46.000
Um hi Fiona.
00:40:46.079 --> 00:40:48.079
Yeah, she knows this.
00:40:48.159 --> 00:40:49.519
I tell this anecdote all the time.
00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:51.440
Where are you, Fiona?
00:40:51.840 --> 00:41:06.239
Um, and and I learned that I had to give her space because if I didn't give her space, I wasn't gonna get the well-thought-through, well-reasoned um approach that I have come to love her for, you know.
00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:09.519
But what she also learned is to send me a holding message.
00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:13.360
So if I'd asked her a question, she'd be like, I'm gonna need to think on that.
00:41:13.519 --> 00:41:18.320
It's Friday, I will let you know on Monday, or it's Tuesday, I will let you know by the end of the week.
00:41:18.480 --> 00:41:25.119
And that would that would hold me, but it would also, and I would then be able to hold space for her.
00:41:25.760 --> 00:41:38.719
Um, conversely, if there's a crisis, I am the absolute best person for the job, and Fiona will trot along after me doing exactly what I say because I I think quickly enough for crisis response.
00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:48.079
So within the first two weeks of the pandemic, we had completely reorganised our business to from face-to-face coaching and assessments to online everything.
00:41:48.159 --> 00:41:56.079
Um, and I was busy lobbying the British Psychological Society to validate over the diagnostic assessments over the phone.
00:41:56.239 --> 00:42:05.199
So, you know, that there's there's strengths and challenges in the way that I operate, and there's strengths and challenges in the way that other people in my leadership team operate.
00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:11.440
And the important thing is that we build a diverse team and we recognise each other's strengths.
00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:14.239
We know what each other is good at and we respect that.
00:42:14.480 --> 00:42:22.400
And that's I think my main daily accountability is knowing that I'm I'm not surrounded by yes people.
00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:25.519
I'm surrounded by people that will tell me if I've gone too fast.
00:42:26.239 --> 00:42:27.119
How do you deal with that?
00:42:27.199 --> 00:42:28.880
How do you deal with the challenge?
00:42:29.119 --> 00:42:30.800
Um, I love being challenged.
00:42:30.960 --> 00:42:31.119
Okay.
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:33.119
Yeah, I'm really happy to be challenged.
00:42:33.280 --> 00:42:36.239
And I and I notice I notice my own responses.
00:42:36.559 --> 00:42:36.960
Do you know?
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:48.719
I can um I notice if I'm having a response that that means that I've got some drama about it, and I probably need to work that out before I make something happen.
00:42:48.880 --> 00:42:54.159
Um, I've learned the the power of writing the email and then not sending it until the next day.
00:42:54.400 --> 00:42:56.800
Um, those kind of things.
00:42:56.960 --> 00:42:59.039
But you know, that's that's personal development work.
00:42:59.199 --> 00:43:01.440
I think any any leader has to go through that stuff.
00:43:01.599 --> 00:43:09.679
Anybody in a leadership position has to do work on themselves because you you can't create psychological safety in a business if you haven't got it for yourself.
00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:20.480
You need to know your own boundaries, you need to know how you feel when your boundaries are transgressed and how you deal with that in an emotionally safe, non-dramery way.
00:43:20.639 --> 00:43:31.519
And you need to be able to execute that, and then you also need to know that you're not perfect and that sometimes you will fail on that, and that you can fess up and apologize and take accountability for that.
00:43:31.679 --> 00:43:34.400
So I think all leaders need to be good at that.
00:43:34.880 --> 00:43:35.519
Yes.
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:42.239
The um there's a lot of leaders who will try to hide mistakes.
00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:42.800
Oh, yeah.
00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:49.599
They want to feel that they're the person, they're the man, they're the woman, because I'm the CEO, because I'm the director.
00:43:51.519 --> 00:43:53.840
Well, we we're both aware it's out there.
00:43:54.079 --> 00:43:57.119
We are, we're some of your clients might be those people.
00:43:57.360 --> 00:43:58.000
Yeah.
00:43:58.480 --> 00:44:16.239
And They might listen to this conversation or hear you speak on many platforms and say, Well, look, it's easy for you because you've been in therapy, you've been in coaching, you've studied psycholog psychology from the age of 15.
00:44:16.559 --> 00:44:18.320
And it's been since before that.
00:44:18.639 --> 00:44:20.639
I was I was in therapy from 13.
00:44:21.360 --> 00:44:22.880
Right, from 13 onwards.
00:44:23.199 --> 00:44:28.159
You've been able to use tools to work on you.
00:44:28.880 --> 00:44:32.719
And then that evolves into the professional workplace.
00:44:32.880 --> 00:44:37.679
That evolves into your coaching practice, that evolves into you being the professor.
00:44:37.840 --> 00:44:42.719
That gives you a very different approach when writing for magazines on a global scale.
00:44:43.199 --> 00:44:52.800
What would you say to those people who have no idea about coaching, about using tools, about seeking help?
00:44:53.119 --> 00:44:54.239
Start somewhere.
00:44:54.400 --> 00:45:00.639
You know, you it's it's yeah, it's not about um it's a it's about being in process all the time.
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:02.639
It's about having that supervision group.
00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:06.239
There are plenty of free communities doing supervision work.
00:45:06.480 --> 00:45:23.119
My good friend, my good, good friend Whitney Isles, currently runs something called the Rebellious Practitioner, where she holds space for people that are practicing inclusion work, um uh anti-violent violence prevention work, uh, coaching, health work.
00:45:23.280 --> 00:45:28.719
Uh, and yeah, she holds a free book club where we we do, we we look at various works.
00:45:28.800 --> 00:45:32.159
We've just done a whole series on uh on trauma.
00:45:32.239 --> 00:45:36.960
Um, so we've read all of the big trauma books that are out there and debriefed them.
00:45:37.119 --> 00:45:39.440
Um so that's something I would recommend.
00:45:39.519 --> 00:45:43.519
The Rebellious Practitioner with Whitney Isles, man, that woman is gifted.
00:45:43.679 --> 00:45:58.880
Um, I also I wrote a book called Learning from Neurodivergent Leaders, which is a series of stories, not just of mine, but of other neurodivergent people in leadership positions, and it's got worksheets so you can do personal development for yourself within it.
00:45:59.039 --> 00:46:08.000
Um, so I think it's it's not about finding the best coach always or finding the right therapist, it's it's just it's about having that mindset.
00:46:08.159 --> 00:46:09.360
What can I learn about myself?
00:46:09.519 --> 00:46:10.960
How can I be more self-aware?
00:46:11.119 --> 00:46:13.199
How can I get these corners rubbed off?
00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:24.639
Um when I when I started training coaches, one of my first gigs actually as an occupational psychologist was training uh people who were going to be unemployment support workers.
00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:36.639
So, in the very first New Deal for unemployed people back in 2002, um, under the Blair Brown government, um I was part of those for those first contracts.
00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:47.840
And so I hired a bunch of of people who would would be working with unemployed people in um Hammersmith and anyway, across London.
00:46:48.079 --> 00:47:03.840
And we used to, we used to we used to say that the most important thing is is rapport because in any therapeutic alliance, any therapeutic interaction, the the power of the of the relationship is what creates the most impact in terms of change.
00:47:04.239 --> 00:47:06.079
So you have to be able to build rapport.
00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:10.960
So we used to say to people, go and build rapport with who would you find it hard to build rapport with?
00:47:11.039 --> 00:47:13.119
Go and build rapport with one person like that.
00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:19.119
We had we had this one woman who um said that she she was a bit frightened of homeless people.
00:47:19.280 --> 00:47:20.880
That was something she would find hard.
00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:24.639
If she had a client who was homeless, she she doesn't know how she would handle that.
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:32.960
So we were all righty, your developmental task overnight before we you come back tomorrow is to strike up a conversation with a homeless person.
00:47:33.199 --> 00:47:34.880
Only has to be one or two sentences.
00:47:35.119 --> 00:47:42.559
So she leaves the session, um, she goes to the bus stop, and there's a guy selling the big big issue right next to the bus stop.
00:47:42.719 --> 00:47:44.639
So she's like, right, this is my moment.
00:47:45.119 --> 00:47:48.719
And one bus comes past, her bus comes and it goes past, she leaves it.
00:47:48.800 --> 00:47:50.159
She still hasn't built up the courage.
00:47:50.320 --> 00:47:53.280
She stands there a bit longer, another one of her buses passed.
00:47:53.360 --> 00:47:55.360
She leaves it, she doesn't build up the courage.
00:47:55.519 --> 00:48:01.119
She finally builds up the courage and goes and buys a copy of the big issue and strikes up a conversation with this person.
00:48:01.360 --> 00:48:05.599
It turns out that was his first day selling the big issue, and he has been doing the same thing.
00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:10.880
He has been stood there trying to build up the courage to ask her to buy a copy of the big issue.
00:48:11.119 --> 00:48:11.760
I know.
00:48:12.079 --> 00:48:16.079
So I just feel like the most important thing is that mindset.
00:48:16.159 --> 00:48:22.400
And the way you get your corners rubbed off is by working with building rapport with people who are not like you.
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:24.000
That's how you do it.
00:48:24.159 --> 00:48:24.400
Yeah.
00:48:24.559 --> 00:48:24.800
Yeah.
00:48:25.039 --> 00:48:29.920
You've got to find, you know, my my thing with all my clients when I'm coaching is I've got to find something.
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:32.000
What's the thing that I love about this person?
00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:34.639
And where is the thing that they love?
00:48:34.719 --> 00:48:36.320
Those are the two things I'm always looking for.
00:48:36.480 --> 00:48:47.519
I'm looking for the spark in someone's eye when they start talking about something in their work or something in their life that they suddenly change their posture, their face lights up.
00:48:47.679 --> 00:48:49.519
Because that right there, that's their career.
00:48:49.760 --> 00:48:50.719
And I need to find it.
00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:52.639
I need to find that that magic seed.
00:48:53.519 --> 00:48:56.880
And um and what's the thing I love about them?
00:48:56.960 --> 00:49:00.159
You know, what is it that they can do that's so uniquely them?
00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:03.760
So I think I think that's the most important thing that you do.
00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:19.519
That find people to work with that are not like you, learn because that's you will learn doing that, and have a safe sounding board space where you can take stuff so that you don't spill your emotional bucket over everybody that you're working with.
00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:31.440
Well, listen, Nancy, thank you for coming on and speaking to me and shedding some light into your world and your life, your upbringing, your advice, your insights.
00:49:32.159 --> 00:49:40.239
Um my last question to you very quickly You're at a significant stage in life where it looks like things are thriving.
00:49:40.960 --> 00:49:45.119
What's next for for yourself and for the genius within?
00:49:47.840 --> 00:49:50.000
That's a big question right now.
00:49:50.480 --> 00:49:54.159
Um I don't know if I can give that in a short answer.
00:49:54.320 --> 00:50:03.760
Um, I was actually feeling really burned out at the end of last year because of how difficult things have become in the DEI space, the the kind of sense of backlash.
00:50:03.840 --> 00:50:05.920
It is it's like a heavy cloak, isn't it, right now?
00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:10.239
It's a heavy, heavy cloak that we are wearing and carrying when we work in this space.
00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:12.559
And I was feeling quite burned out.
00:50:12.719 --> 00:50:14.480
And um I had this conversation.
00:50:14.639 --> 00:50:17.199
My husband is like, my husband is so funny.
00:50:17.280 --> 00:50:18.400
I love him to death.
00:50:18.480 --> 00:50:26.320
Uh, he is the yin to my yang, and um, he is the kind of person who's been putting the recommended amount into a pension plan since he was 22 years old.
00:50:26.559 --> 00:50:27.199
God love him.
00:50:27.599 --> 00:50:29.760
Obviously, I have not, I'm not that person.
00:50:29.920 --> 00:50:41.920
Um, but um, so he was he had a financial advisor come round to talk to him about his pension, and he they were saying, you know, well, actually, you know, you could feasibly retire at 57 if you wanted to really lower your standard of living.
00:50:42.079 --> 00:50:47.199
And then the guy looked at me and said, If if your husband was retired, what would you do?
00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:49.360
And I just simply hadn't thought about that.
00:50:49.519 --> 00:50:50.480
I hadn't thought about it.
00:50:50.559 --> 00:50:55.199
But even though I hadn't thought about it, I came out with this ferociously passionate answer.
00:50:55.360 --> 00:50:59.360
And as it was, as the words were coming out of my mouth, I was like, Oh my god, that's true.
00:50:59.519 --> 00:51:02.159
I'm not burned out, I'm not burned out at all.
00:51:02.400 --> 00:51:18.320
So, um, so what of what I actually said was, oh my God, if Dan retires and all he's doing is pottering round the house, knowing where my passport is and ironing things, oh my god, I would have a second career, I would take over the world, I would run 10, I would write 10 books.
00:51:18.480 --> 00:51:21.280
And then I went, oh, that's true.
00:51:21.840 --> 00:51:23.360
I'm not done yet.
00:51:23.679 --> 00:51:30.159
So since that meeting, I've been planning what my what my next moves are, and you'll just have to wait and see.
00:51:30.880 --> 00:51:31.920
There we go.
00:51:32.400 --> 00:51:34.079
Nancy, thank you so much.
00:51:34.159 --> 00:51:37.280
I look forward to seeing what the plans will be.
00:51:37.840 --> 00:51:40.000
I look forward to seeing you on the main stage.
00:51:40.159 --> 00:51:50.000
I look forward to reading more of your articles, and I look forward as well to eventually seeing you at a music venue somewhere soon when we're breaking in our shoes together.
00:51:50.639 --> 00:51:51.760
But thank you so much.
00:51:52.239 --> 00:51:53.039
Thank you for having me.
00:51:53.440 --> 00:51:54.000
Take care.
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:01.760
Welcome to the podcast, Nancy.
00:00:01.840 --> 00:00:02.479
I hope you're well.
00:00:02.640 --> 00:00:03.040
How are you?
00:00:03.359 --> 00:00:04.480
I'm very well, thank you.
00:00:04.799 --> 00:00:05.839
You look excellent.
00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:08.320
I love the outfit, especially the boots.
00:00:09.279 --> 00:00:17.120
Nancy, uh this podcast recording is gonna be a little bit different potentially to what you're used to.
00:00:17.600 --> 00:00:25.120
All our audiences are used to, because I'm sure that you are approached a lot of the time around who you are as a professional.
00:00:25.679 --> 00:00:39.359
But I always do like to interview guests, professionals, and understand a little bit about their personal upbringing, their bit of their personal life, just so that we can feel and understand who you, Nancy Doyle, is.
00:00:39.679 --> 00:00:40.320
Is that alright?
00:00:40.560 --> 00:00:42.000
Yeah, that's absolutely grand.
00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:48.000
In speaking to you before and in getting to know you a little bit, I know that you're very unfiltered, which I love.
00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:49.600
It's helpful for podcasts.
00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:51.039
It is, it is, it is.
00:00:51.359 --> 00:00:54.560
If you don't mind, just provide a brief overview into your upbringing.
00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:56.399
What was the world of Nancy like?
00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:00.719
Mixed.
00:01:01.039 --> 00:01:14.719
Um, so my my dad is a builder from New Jersey who left um New Jersey in the 70s to uh as a protest and a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
00:01:14.799 --> 00:01:28.079
So he came over to this country and um was working on a building site in Oxford and wandered into Balliol College, Oxford, one day, covered in cement, and said, What do you dad, what do you gotta do to go here?
00:01:28.799 --> 00:01:30.000
To some Don.
00:01:30.959 --> 00:01:39.599
Um, and anyway, cut a very long story short, ended up doing um a philosophy degree and an MPhil in um politics and philosophy.
00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:49.280
And so for my life growing up, he was part-time teaching philosophy and politics in Southampton and part-time carried on as a builder.
00:01:49.359 --> 00:01:58.159
Okay, so it's a very interesting intersection of middle class and working class values, uh, language, approach, style.
00:01:58.319 --> 00:02:08.719
My mother is from a sort of very quiet suburb of Berkshire, so obviously that was quite a quite a match or mismatch, I should say.
00:02:08.879 --> 00:02:10.960
No, they're not any longer together.
00:02:11.199 --> 00:02:24.080
And um, and I've got two younger sisters who are absolutely chamasing, and my my ride or die sisters, in fact, it actually says that on the back of this, that they gave me for my 50th birthday, ride or die sisters.
00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:35.280
Um, so with all that, I I think the the biggest standout feature of my childhood is that um I was uh a professional truant.
00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:49.520
And when I say professional, um at the age of 12 when I went to secondary school, um I resolved to never give the school a genuine letter from my mother so that they never had a copy of her handwriting to compare any letters to.
00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:50.719
Oh, okay.
00:02:50.960 --> 00:03:09.039
So I was I was ready and prepped for truanting at that point, and um when I was 14 um I had quite an intense period of mental distress, and after that I basically didn't go to school again.
00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:21.120
Um, I used to go on a Monday and collect my work from my teachers, go home and do it, which is uh a reasonable adjustment for what was then absolutely undiagnosed ADHD.
00:03:21.759 --> 00:03:35.280
Um, which, you know, being a Gen X woman, you you don't get ADHD as a diagnosis as a child unless you're violent, basically, in that era, and and I and I wasn't violent, um, I was withdrawn.
00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:44.159
Um but yeah, so so I think that adjustment was both a blessing and a curse, you know.
00:03:44.240 --> 00:03:47.360
I mean, I I didn't enjoy education until I did my PhD.
00:03:47.439 --> 00:03:49.520
It was always a means to an end at that point.
00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:57.599
I I left home at 16 and and started working in um uh care homes for adults with learning disabilities.
00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:04.560
Um, and I found work the antidote to school, which is not always true for people.
00:04:04.639 --> 00:04:06.960
A lot of times, if you hate school, you hate work.
00:04:07.199 --> 00:04:09.120
I hated school, I loved work.
00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:24.399
So I had this kind of mission, if you like, to kind of make work as inclusive as possible so that more people could have that experience because I would see around me all the time the effects of people who hated school, and mostly they were neurodivergent.
00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:34.480
Um, and so that kind of absence from school period was distressing, it was isolating, it was it wasn't great socially.
00:04:34.879 --> 00:04:54.000
Um, I don't I absolutely was was very psychiatrically distressed at that point, and um and it wasn't a great era for me, but I also see it as a point of privilege, actually, because if you think about that arrangement, going into school, getting my work and being allowed to take it home, with no one giving my parents a hard time.
00:04:54.160 --> 00:05:01.279
Well, do you know if that isn't white privilege, I don't know what it is, but also a privilege of the time, you know, the era.
00:05:01.439 --> 00:05:04.959
There's no way that that I would be able to do that now.
00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:06.000
And this was in the UK?
00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:10.480
Yeah, that was in the UK, it was in Southampton, in in kind of you know, a city school in Southampton.
00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:12.240
There's lots to unpick there already.
00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:20.480
You know, um, from your perspective, when you're very reflective, as I know you are, you said it was a blessing and a curse.
00:05:21.439 --> 00:05:29.439
You were able to see others who were similar to yourself in terms of their approach, hating school, loving work.
00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:35.439
Were you aware of just hating school and hadn't realized that work was something you could live, you could love, you know?
00:05:35.759 --> 00:05:37.199
Potentially because of the age in which they were.
00:05:37.439 --> 00:05:37.600
Yeah.
00:05:37.759 --> 00:05:37.839
Right?
00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:39.199
Yeah, or their backgrounds.
00:05:39.439 --> 00:05:39.920
Do you know?
00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:40.480
Yeah.
00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:51.519
Thinking about that now, what would you say would be the biggest lessons that propelled you for the career that you were about to have?
00:05:52.639 --> 00:05:57.199
Um, I think that the major one is the waste of human potential.
00:05:57.519 --> 00:06:09.120
So when I left home at 16 and I was kind of living in bed sits and I was living with um a collection of people uh who I've recently started seeing um in various guises.
00:06:09.199 --> 00:06:12.319
And you know, I feel so lucky that I met that group of people.
00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:16.800
I was a very vulnerable young woman, and I could have met any group of people at 16, 17.
00:06:16.879 --> 00:06:28.079
And actually, what I met was a group of fairly neurodivergent misfits who were all struggling in their own way, but were all really safe, uh, solid people, and I do feel very grateful for them actually.
00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:44.639
But you know, a lot of them were struggling, a lot of them were trying and failing to do A-levels, trying and failing to start jobs, and but I could see around me how much intellect and how much creativity and how much talent there was in that group of people, and I I enjoyed the heck out of them.
00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:47.040
Um, and I'm not very tolerant, do you know?
00:06:47.600 --> 00:07:03.600
So, you know, they were they were they were yeah, they were a thrive, they could have been a thriving bunch, and I just used to sort of think, you know, why can't that why can't you find a way through into a job that suits you, you know, and and what what could we do with you?
00:07:03.920 --> 00:07:11.759
What could we do with this with this writing ability you've got, this sculpture sculpture ability that you've got, this this musical talent that you've got.
00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:20.399
Um, so yeah, frustration, I think, at the number of people who just did not have any way to get a career path.
00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:28.000
And and and what what's going on in our schools that people leave feeling like they've got nothing to offer when they do.
00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:29.199
That is still the case today.
00:07:29.519 --> 00:07:31.519
It's it's at it's actually worse today, I think.
00:07:31.759 --> 00:07:33.199
Genuinely, I think it's worse.
00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:34.160
Yeah.
00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:41.439
You were, as you mentioned earlier on, uh going through some mental challenges at a very young age.
00:07:41.759 --> 00:07:46.240
You left home at a very young age, you were working at a very young age.
00:07:46.720 --> 00:08:00.319
They're challenges that adults have, and the burden of that, dealing with that, I can only assume, because I don't know if I can't diagnose myself in terms of having mental health issues per se.
00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:14.240
However, as a young teenager, I can imagine it might have been exciting and scary and challenging, all within the same ball of emotion.
00:08:16.240 --> 00:08:39.440
Tell me about your educational journey because I know what you are today in terms of your qualifications, but if you don't mind, just give a very quick run-through in terms of you know, someone who actually was truant in from school who you know crafted a letter from mum, provided it's a teachers.
00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:43.039
The odds should be against you.
00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:48.799
I know in terms of you know, if you're holistically looking at your profile, but you made it work.
00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:51.120
So, what qualifications do you have?
00:08:51.519 --> 00:08:56.720
So, um, with that approach, I actually got six A's, two B's, and a C at GCSE.
00:08:56.960 --> 00:08:57.279
Okay.
00:08:57.519 --> 00:08:59.440
So that's a decent collection of GCSE.
00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:08.799
But what we're not saying to our listeners is to leave school and you know, at 14 years of age, get your homework.
00:09:09.039 --> 00:09:09.919
It was right for you.
00:09:10.159 --> 00:09:11.120
It was absolutely right for me.
00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:16.720
And I imagine that there are lots of other teenagers that it's right for right now who are not able to have that, who are struggling.
00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:20.960
Um, a lot of their parents will be homeschooling them now, they'll be official homeschoolers.
00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:24.159
That's that's probably a possibility these days.
00:09:24.399 --> 00:09:38.639
Um so I do, you know, I was interviewed by someone who was doing a PhD on post-traumatic growth, and uh he was trying to say to me, What, you know, what was it the school could have done that would have allowed you to participate in the school?
00:09:38.799 --> 00:09:40.720
And I was just like, not be a school.
00:09:41.279 --> 00:09:42.320
There isn't anything.
00:09:42.480 --> 00:09:50.879
Um, but anyway, so I so I did manage to get some decent GCSEs, and then I started eight different A levels over four different years.
00:09:51.039 --> 00:09:54.799
So I, you know, I just started them as like, now I can't be bothered, don't like this, started again.
00:09:54.879 --> 00:09:56.399
No, I don't like this, can't be other don't.
00:09:56.799 --> 00:10:00.559
I managed to get myself onto an art A level without having an art GCSE.
00:10:00.799 --> 00:10:09.440
Um, I started classics, I started uh sociology, I started uh English, French, a whole bunch of things.
00:10:09.600 --> 00:10:14.480
Um and so over a four-year period, I didn't finish any of them.
00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:22.639
And then I went to another thing that doesn't exist anymore, so that privilege of the era that I lived in, um, the Connections Career Centres.
00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:23.360
Do you remember them?
00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:23.840
No.
00:10:24.080 --> 00:10:31.360
Okay, well, they were these things and they were just offices, and you could just walk in and chat to someone about education and career options.
00:10:31.519 --> 00:10:41.200
So I just literally walked in there at the age of 19 and said, I want to go to university, I want to do psychology, I'm fed up with meeting psychologists that don't know what they're doing, they're all useless.
00:10:41.360 --> 00:10:45.759
I need to go and study this thing and find out what it is that they know so that I can argue with them.
00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:55.840
And the lady said to me, Well, you can either wait till next September and do an access course, or could you finish any of those A levels that you started?
00:10:56.559 --> 00:11:00.639
So I was like, I could probably finish English and French.
00:11:00.799 --> 00:11:09.039
So I did that, and then I got a place at Middlesex University to do psychology, and I was so sure I was going to fail those A levels anyway.
00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:14.639
I was like, I mean, I'd finished them in three months as a correspondence course, and I was like, this is not gonna go well.
00:11:14.799 --> 00:11:17.120
So um over the summer I skipped town.
00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:20.960
I went to New York so that I wasn't around when the results came out.
00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:21.600
Yeah.
00:11:21.759 --> 00:11:29.200
Um uh and went to New York and lived in New York for a year, but I did get into university and um with a D and an E.
00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:29.759
Wow.
00:11:29.919 --> 00:11:32.240
I know that's called the gift of the gab, folks.
00:11:32.639 --> 00:11:38.000
But um uh, but yeah, so I did get in and I just enjoyed staying in New York anyway.
00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:41.919
Um, came back because I was the last year of grant assisted study.
00:11:42.159 --> 00:11:42.720
I know.
00:11:42.879 --> 00:11:43.759
Again, do you know?
00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:48.960
I'm just like I know I couldn't justify hanging out in New York when I could get a degree for free.
00:11:49.120 --> 00:11:50.240
I was like, that's just silly.
00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:58.240
So I went, came back, went to London, did my degree, and from then on I would say I was on a pretty even track, actually, career-wise.
00:11:58.320 --> 00:12:00.960
That's probably where I really started to sort stuff out.
00:12:01.039 --> 00:12:06.879
And I went from I went into psychology like most people do, thinking that I wanted to do clinical psychology.
00:12:06.960 --> 00:12:11.120
Um, and about halfway through the degree, I was like, nah, I can't do that.
00:12:11.360 --> 00:12:16.080
I I I can't work for the NHS, and that's the only way to train as a clinical psychologist.
00:12:16.159 --> 00:12:17.440
You have to work for the NHS.
00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:20.159
I can't work for the NHS, it will be the ruin of me.
00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:25.360
I will spend my entire time fighting the system and I I will, it will, it will break me.
00:12:25.600 --> 00:12:36.240
Um, there was at the time you couldn't get sponsorship to be a clinical psychologist if you were over, I think the ages was about 26, 27.
00:12:36.720 --> 00:12:44.240
Um, and I just thought how short-sighted that was because I realized I didn't have enough experience to do what I wanted to do.
00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:56.080
What I wanted to do was to help young people like me who were struggling in school, who were struggling with various kinds of traumas, what I now know to be neurodivergence, um mental distress.
00:12:56.320 --> 00:13:00.720
And what I realized in that degree is that I had no experience of parenting.
00:13:00.879 --> 00:13:06.320
And when you've got young people, if you don't understand what's happening for their parents, you cannot help them.
00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:14.559
It's too easy to get into a rescuer position and to, you know, be on their side and see it, you know, to be drawn into that battle.
00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:20.320
And I thought I would rather become a parent, live my life, and then go and do it.
00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:22.159
And there was no route to do that.
00:13:22.320 --> 00:13:25.600
So that just made me even more dismissive of the whole profession, really.
00:13:25.679 --> 00:13:26.720
I was like, so what is this?
00:13:26.879 --> 00:13:33.679
This is an profession entirely staffed by well-meaning middle-class white girls that have no experience.
00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:38.159
Like, how is this as a profession going to succeed?
00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:49.120
I am pleased to tell you that it is much more diverse now, and they have changed a lot of those rules, and things have moved on tremendously in clinical psychology.
00:13:49.440 --> 00:14:10.879
But also in that degree, I did the occupational psychology module, which is the psychology of work, the psychology of careers, of ambition, of work performance, of motivation, of uh organizational culture, of um methods of assessment and uh training and development and lifelong learning.
00:14:10.960 --> 00:14:13.519
And I was like, ooh, I kind of like this.
00:14:13.600 --> 00:14:19.759
Um, and I nailed it, I got first without even trying, you know, and I was like, that's it, that's that's what I'm gonna do.
00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:31.120
Well, that's interesting because think about what you said earlier on when you went to work in the care homes when you saw others and you wanted to give, you wanted to support, roughly seven, eight years later down the line.
00:14:31.679 --> 00:14:33.360
It's coming together.
00:14:33.679 --> 00:14:40.720
Yeah, so I did the occupational psychology masters and then I did my chartership as an occupational psychologist.
00:14:40.799 --> 00:14:45.039
Um, so I finished that in 2004 or five.
00:14:45.360 --> 00:14:56.080
Um, and my first early jobs in the early 2000s, I worked for access to work, so I would do disability uh workplace needs assessments and recommending adjustments for people.
00:14:56.399 --> 00:15:00.639
Um, the DWP used to pay for diagnosis at that time as well, would you believe?
00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:06.720
So I used to do a lot of dyslexia and dyspraxia diagnoses and later ADHD as well.
00:15:06.879 --> 00:15:19.360
Um, and then I also trained as a coach because um I was doing some other work with people who were long-term unemployed with a lot of really good coaches, and I kind of fell in love with coaching as a method of support.
00:15:19.679 --> 00:15:27.919
I personally started to get more personal development out of coaching than I ever had had out of support from clinical psychologists.
00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:30.720
So I was like, actually, there's something in this coaching stuff.
00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:48.240
Um, and so I carried on with the coaching and um and then kind of genius within sort of my business sort of grew out of that, uh, initially mainly focused on coaching because I kept kept recommending coaching for people as part of an assessment and then just hoping that they'd get a good coach.
00:15:48.320 --> 00:15:51.279
Yeah, and then thinking, nah, I need to be providing this.
00:15:51.360 --> 00:15:54.480
I know a ton of good coaches, let me get this sorted.
00:15:54.639 --> 00:15:55.440
Um, yeah.
00:15:55.919 --> 00:16:31.039
So there are a number of coaches, professionals who are great at having the gifts of the gap, inspiring, motivating from your journey, having understood education, having experienced the highs and the lows, what are your thoughts in regards to having the actual qualification to carry out the work that someone in your circumstance is doing currently?
00:16:31.200 --> 00:16:32.960
Is it important to have the paperwork?
00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:36.559
It's important to do due diligence to your craft.
00:16:37.519 --> 00:16:41.200
Um and there are a number of different ways of doing that.
00:16:41.519 --> 00:16:49.759
So you know, I think with with coaching, there's no there's no one qualification that is perfect, you know.
00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:52.080
Um there's lots of different routes into coaching.
00:16:52.240 --> 00:17:02.559
You can do a level three in coaching, you can do a level five in coaching, you can do a level seven in coaching, you can do a coaching master's degree, you know, there's lots of ways you can get into it.
00:17:02.799 --> 00:17:05.839
Um, and you can do some things that aren't regulated at all.
00:17:05.920 --> 00:17:10.319
And I would say I probably learned more out of those um sessions than anything else.
00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:25.839
There's a there's a stream, there's a strand of coaching, which is also a therapeutic strand called uh clean language and symbolic modelling, which I dedicated myself to for about five or six years, and I probably learned more out of that than any of my formal qualifications.
00:17:26.240 --> 00:17:35.839
Um, but one of the things that you learn out of a formal qualification and out of a professional training process is around things like your competence to practice.
00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:40.400
So the point at which you say, Do you know what, this is beyond me, and I now need to refer you on.
00:17:40.559 --> 00:17:44.799
So you know you know you start to learn what your limits are and work to those.
00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:48.160
Um, you get challenged on your own stuff.
00:17:48.319 --> 00:17:57.680
Um, so you you need to be challenged on your own stuff if you're gonna do people work, you need to know where your boundaries are, and because it particularly if you have lived experience.
00:17:57.839 --> 00:18:03.759
So I would say if you have lived experience, that's even more important because you're gonna meet clients who are gonna trigger you.
00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:10.799
They're gonna be like you, they're gonna have had similar things to you, and it's it's difficult to not get drawn into that emotionally.
00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:23.039
You have to know that that's gonna happen, you have to prepare for it, you have to have supervision groups, people where you can go to bounce that off, and you have to know when it's too much for you and you have to refer that person on.
00:18:23.119 --> 00:18:29.920
And I think that stuff's overlooked in a lot of the kind of oh, have a six-week certificate in ADHD coaching.
00:18:30.079 --> 00:18:32.960
Like people aren't taking care of that.
00:18:33.279 --> 00:18:38.400
And in my community, in neurodiversity, neurodivergent people are vulnerable.
00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:41.920
We're much more likely to have PTSD than the general population.
00:18:42.400 --> 00:18:51.440
Um, we've been ostracised, discriminated against, we think we have no value, we're worried about our careers, we're worried about our livelihoods.
00:18:51.599 --> 00:18:52.960
Can we put a roof over our heads?
00:18:53.039 --> 00:18:57.599
Because will we ever manage to hold down a job more than two years, six months, whatever it might be?
00:18:57.839 --> 00:19:04.480
So that level of vulnerability requires due diligence and it requires safeguarding and support structures.
00:19:04.640 --> 00:19:09.200
So I wouldn't say that you have to do a qualification, but what I would say is you have to do that.
00:19:11.119 --> 00:19:11.839
Thank you.
00:19:13.759 --> 00:19:23.279
This discussion um we have to cover a community which you've already mentioned you're part of and very proud to be a part of.
00:19:23.519 --> 00:19:25.920
You smile whenever we talk about it.
00:19:26.799 --> 00:19:31.920
And I know also that it frustrates you a little bit as well, but we'll get into that a little bit later.
00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:34.319
A bit of a loaded question for you now.
00:19:35.279 --> 00:19:38.400
Why is neurodiversity so important to you?
00:19:40.559 --> 00:19:44.240
Um again, it goes back to that wasted potential.
00:19:45.039 --> 00:19:51.519
Um in my PhD thesis, I did a my PhD was later.
00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:54.400
I didn't do it until my late 30s, early 40s.
00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:56.240
I finished it when I was 42.
00:19:56.640 --> 00:20:03.200
Um, but when I was finishing it, my supervisor said to me, you know, most people run out of steam in their last chapter, Nancy.
00:20:03.359 --> 00:20:04.880
You need to finish it with a bang.
00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:10.240
You need a couple of really strong sentences right at the end to just top it off.
00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:20.960
And the sentence I chose was that um inclusion is a moral, social, and economic imperative, and we all lose when human potential is squandered.
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:23.279
Um, and I I really believe that.
00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:28.000
I believe that the the human species is diverse for a reason.
00:20:28.319 --> 00:20:33.519
It makes sense to have people that are specialist in one or two areas.
00:20:33.839 --> 00:20:38.960
Um, and you know, what we've got naturally occurring in the human species is neurodiversity.
00:20:39.119 --> 00:20:43.039
So we've got a bunch of people, two-thirds of people, are average.
00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:45.599
They are competent at most things.
00:20:45.680 --> 00:20:54.880
Um, they'll have strengths and weaknesses, but they're much of a muchness, they're falling within a you know, a range of the average ability or uh tendency.
00:20:55.279 --> 00:20:58.720
And then we've got some people with these big spiky profiles, like myself.
00:20:59.039 --> 00:21:07.839
So I've got a very high uh IQ for visual spatial reasoning and much, much lower for working memory.
00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:11.440
How did it feel when this was presented to you?
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:12.799
What that I have that.
00:21:12.960 --> 00:21:13.119
Yeah.
00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:17.119
So when well I didn't get diagnosed until I was 38, which is ridiculous.
00:21:17.279 --> 00:21:18.720
I mean, I've just told you my history, right?
00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:21.680
Didn't go to school, started eight A levels, only finished two.
00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:25.119
Like if that isn't textbook ADHD, I don't know what is.
00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:32.240
Um, but so by the time I I had this experience, I already knew the field.
00:21:32.400 --> 00:21:32.640
Yes.
00:21:32.799 --> 00:21:42.720
So I was going into this knowing I had a spiky profile, knowing that this was likely to have some um, you know, some big differences between strengths and challenges.
00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:47.359
And so I think it's an I don't think I'm a good example of that.
00:21:47.599 --> 00:22:00.960
But I have diagnosed hundreds of people, and the typical response is that people are massively reassured to discover their strengths because that's the bit that nobody Talks about.
00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:07.279
So a neurodivergent person coming for diagnosis as an adult will know what they struggle with.
00:22:07.359 --> 00:22:16.079
They'll be able to tell you the things they can't do because it will have been pointed out to them over and over and over again in the education system or in the workplace, you know.
00:22:16.319 --> 00:22:24.960
And so when you do that assessment and you you feed back the things that they're good at, that's the conversation for me in the diagnosis.
00:22:25.119 --> 00:22:27.839
That's the bit, that's where you can reinstall hope.
00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:46.480
You can get people to start appreciating the things they've been taking for granted and saying, you know, I know just as an example, um, I once assessed a policeman and he was in the top 3% for verbal skills, okay, and the bottom 10% for working memory.
00:22:46.559 --> 00:22:50.079
So he so he was, you know, he was struggling with attention, concentration.
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:55.039
Working memory is kind of how many tabs you can have open in your mind before you start to crash.
00:22:55.359 --> 00:22:56.880
So can you hold three or four things?
00:22:57.039 --> 00:22:59.039
Can you hold seven or eight things at any one time?
00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:00.000
His is quite low.
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:01.599
It was like, you know, three or four things.
00:23:01.759 --> 00:23:03.279
So he already knew about that.
00:23:03.359 --> 00:23:11.119
Um, and when I said he was in the top three percent for verbal comprehension, we started talking about what that meant in in regards to policing.
00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:28.640
In and I was like, it's this will affect your ability to interview, this will affect your ability to build rapport, to speak to people in the street and get to know them, to build an understanding with the community that you're policing, um, to find the right words at the right moment to um uh support a victim.
00:23:28.799 --> 00:23:31.839
And he was like, Oh, I am really good at that.
00:23:32.079 --> 00:23:35.440
And I'm like, Yeah, I can I can see that you'd be really, really good at that.
00:23:35.599 --> 00:23:37.599
And you know, he was taking that for granted.
00:23:37.680 --> 00:23:47.359
What he was hyper focused on the difficulties he had writing up notes accurately, the difficulties he had inputting stuff into the into the date, inputting data.
00:23:47.680 --> 00:24:02.000
And so drawing that focus back to here's your strength, here's the thing that you do, and and that's what takes me back to why neurodiversity is so important, because neurodivergent people have we have different and diverse strengths.
00:24:02.160 --> 00:24:18.160
And if you think about a community of humans in our evolutionary state, so go back tens of thousands of years, you've got a a tribe, a group of about 150 people, it makes absolute sense for 5% of them to be ADHDers.
00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:22.079
We're curious, we don't sit still, we're hyper-vigilant.
00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:26.559
So while everyone else is chatting around the fire, we're like, What's happening here?
00:24:26.799 --> 00:24:27.200
What's going on?
00:24:27.279 --> 00:24:27.440
Yeah.
00:24:27.599 --> 00:24:29.039
Should we go and look over that next hill?
00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:30.079
Let's go and see what's over there.
00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:31.279
Ooh, antelope.
00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:36.640
You know, so if all of us were like that, it would be bedlam.
00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:39.839
But for a minority of us to be like that, brilliant.
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:48.559
And then you've got kind of 10% of the population who are dyslexic, who don't read and write, but that's not a that's not an evolved skill, is it?
00:24:48.720 --> 00:24:51.119
And it's also increasingly not needed.
00:24:51.200 --> 00:24:56.559
Um, but dyslexics are very often really good at visual spatial reasoning and mechanical reasoning.
00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:02.880
So when when the ADHD has gone and found the antelope, the dyslexics will come and build a bridge over the river.
00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:10.400
And meanwhile, the autists who haven't been speaking to anybody, they've just been sitting around the fire to the side, you know, carefully sharpening something.
00:25:10.640 --> 00:25:13.039
Oh, they've invented a spear, you know.
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:21.039
So there's this sort of naturalness to human diversity, which is powerful.
00:25:21.599 --> 00:25:24.319
And we've lost it in the industrial revolution.
00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:34.559
We've we've we've created systems where we wanted everybody to be the same, we wanted humans to be automatons so that we could be part of a production line, and it doesn't work.
00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:39.839
You you exclude too many people from work and life and society like that.
00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:41.759
So that's why it's important to me.
00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:45.519
We need every ounce of human intelligence to get through the next 50 years.
00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:59.039
Agreed, and you know, the way in which you presented those examples there, you know, everyone, everyone who you speak to or everyone who's listening to this will think of scenarios, I'm sure, of what they've experienced.
00:25:59.519 --> 00:26:04.480
You know, I think about when I used to be in school myself a number of years ago.
00:26:05.839 --> 00:26:07.519
It was an all-boys grammar school.
00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:10.160
Yeah, ex-grammar school.
00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:31.839
However, in the canteen at break and lunch times, you would have the blacks in one corner, the Asians in another corner, the Greebos in one corner, the skateboarders in the middle, and anyone else of sorts who found themselves liking each other in another corner.
00:26:32.240 --> 00:26:36.640
And they all stayed within their groups every single day.
00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:45.839
We then go on a trip to Poland, you know, all on a coach for 36 hours from Northamptonshire, where I grew up.
00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:52.880
And you think about why those trips were so great, is because not everybody was the same.
00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:54.240
Yeah.
00:26:54.480 --> 00:27:21.759
It the stories that you'd be able to laugh, discuss, where actually the bonding takes place, knowing that this black ADHD student actually was going out with a white, dyslexic woman or girl at the time, and where they found that balance, that that joy, the excitement, it's in the people.
00:27:22.319 --> 00:27:24.799
But everyone's skill sets and actions are very different.
00:27:25.519 --> 00:27:44.799
What I love is how obviously you being a professional, how you articulate this so that those who aren't aware, and this is why we're doing this, because I wanted to reach out to those who aren't aware, who don't know, who might be wondering, it's in a similar light, it's in a similar vein.
00:27:45.519 --> 00:27:55.200
Um, you know, neurodiversity is something which is huge now, for some reason, over the last five to eight years, has just spiked.
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:58.079
Everyone's saying, This is the space to be a part of.
00:27:58.400 --> 00:28:01.599
This is the people, these are the discussions you need to be having.
00:28:02.319 --> 00:28:05.920
And it's been both brilliant and not brilliant in many ways, actually.
00:28:06.079 --> 00:28:16.160
I mean, I I'm I'm a I'm a small drop in that wave of making that happen with the BBC documentaries that I made in 2017, 2018, the things that I've written.
00:28:16.319 --> 00:28:22.400
There's a there's you know, there's quite a few people that have brought neurodiversity awareness into the public space.
00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:43.839
Um, and I think, you know, I there's been there was the explosion in not just neurodiversity, but DEI, particularly uh racial injustice awareness in the 2020-2021 era, and then the snapback has been absolutely ferocious.
00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.839
And I think the neurodiversity snapback has taken a bit longer.
00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:51.839
It's it's it's just coming now, but it's coming.
00:28:52.079 --> 00:29:03.119
So I think with all inclusion movements, you see these these kind of inflection points where it looks like suddenly some change is gonna happen, and then there's this retrenchment, isn't there?
00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:14.160
And it's having watched this space for 25 years, I um I'm not reassured at the moment that that things are gonna be fine, actually.
00:29:14.799 --> 00:29:20.079
You're a you're a writer, you do um you do some great writing.
00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:22.640
Um, I've read a number of your articles.
00:29:23.359 --> 00:29:41.680
And something that you wrote in one of your articles, quote, if we really want truly new inclusive workplaces, places where talent thrives rather than stalls, we need to dial back the parenting and return agency to neurodivergent adults.
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:45.119
Talk to me about that.
00:29:45.599 --> 00:29:48.559
So that's the current trend that I'm seeing.
00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:53.359
So prior to the awareness, we had a lot of discrimination.
00:29:53.519 --> 00:29:57.839
We had a lot of uh, well, in my day, people weren't dyslexic, they were just thick.
00:29:58.160 --> 00:30:02.319
You know, in my day, kids didn't have ADHD, they were just naughty, they need to be disciplined, you know.
00:30:02.400 --> 00:30:03.440
You had all of that.
00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:06.400
And people would vocalize that quite openly.
00:30:06.559 --> 00:30:08.720
And I think in some spaces they still do.
00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:10.079
That's not gone away.
00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:12.640
Um, but it's quieter than it was.
00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:15.920
Uh, no one was interested in the strengths of neurodivergent people.
00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:20.319
I used to have to kick people's doors down to get them to think about spiky profiles.
00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:39.519
Um, but what I do see happening that's problematic now is um managers who are very well-meaning, who want who support the idea of inclusion and neurodiversity, but who don't know how to support neurodivergent people to thrive.
00:30:39.599 --> 00:30:42.160
So what they will do instead is take over.
00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:50.720
So if they've got someone who's struggling with a certain task, let's say it's a report that has to be written once a week, they'll start doing that report for them.
00:30:51.119 --> 00:31:07.759
They, if they've got someone who is struggling to regulate their emotions and does kind of overspill, uh, quite sort of direct, unpleasant language, you know, is quite rude to people, they think that they're not allowed to talk about that.
00:31:07.839 --> 00:31:12.960
So they'll just sort of let that person carry on doing it and they'll tell everyone that they just have to suck it up.
00:31:13.359 --> 00:31:19.119
And what that's doing is robbing neurodivergent people of the opportunity to learn.
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:29.680
And what happens is when that manager runs out of steam because they've been covering, um, that neurodivergent person is left out on a limb.
00:31:29.839 --> 00:31:34.480
All of a sudden the expectations change and they don't have those skills.
00:31:34.559 --> 00:31:38.720
So we're de-skilling neurodivergent people by not believing in them.
00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:43.119
There's there's nothing about being neurodivergent that doesn't mean you can't learn to meet deadlines.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:52.079
There's nothing about being dyslexic that means that assistive technology can't get you to write a report as as fluently and quickly as someone who isn't dyslexic.
00:31:52.720 --> 00:31:57.039
Um I'm I'm a neurodivergent woman, I've had to learn how to manage my emotions.
00:31:57.200 --> 00:32:02.559
I wouldn't be running an organization with 200 people in it if I couldn't manage my emotions.
00:32:03.119 --> 00:32:05.440
We have we have the ability to learn.
00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:14.400
The adjustment is that you help us and you don't blame us for not already being able to do those things, not that you lower the standards for us.
00:32:14.559 --> 00:32:18.559
And so what I'm seeing is a lot of lowering of standards for neurodivergent people.
00:32:18.640 --> 00:32:28.079
I've I actually heard in a workshop an HR, a senior HR professional says to said to me, How much unprofessional behaviour do I have to accept in order to be neuroinclusive?
00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:29.680
Well, I see your eyebrows.
00:32:29.759 --> 00:32:30.400
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:33.920
Now we can have a long conversation about what you call unprofessional, you know.
00:32:34.079 --> 00:32:43.680
I mean, one person's micromanagement is another person's support, one person's direct is another person's rude, one person's polite is another person's insincere.
00:32:43.839 --> 00:32:46.960
There's, you know, there's there's nuance to all of this.
00:32:47.200 --> 00:32:50.960
But do you have to accept unprofessional behavior to be inclusive?
00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:51.759
No.
00:32:52.559 --> 00:33:06.480
Um, what you should do is you should give that person the benefit of the doubt, and you should um assume that they're not trying to be malicious or malevolent or um aggressive or you know, lazy or any of those things.
00:33:06.799 --> 00:33:11.440
But what you should do is help them and say, okay, so I can see you're struggling with this.
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:12.960
What can we do to support you?
00:33:13.200 --> 00:33:20.799
You see all that good stuff you do over there, great, we want more of that, but we can see that you really struggle with planning and prioritising your workload.
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:22.720
So, how do we support you with that?
00:33:22.960 --> 00:33:27.200
Managers can give some support, coaches are there for exactly that sort of thing.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:34.640
And and so I think that's my fear at the moment is the infantilisation of neurodivergent people.
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:52.640
And I think it probably has um parallels to uh the, you know, we, you know, in terms when I think about the anti-racist work that happened uh in 21-22, we saw a lot of white saviorism, and I think it's got parallels to that.
00:33:53.519 --> 00:33:54.720
So it's it's that stage.
00:33:54.799 --> 00:33:58.079
And what it says to me, this isn't this is an immature conversation.
00:33:58.319 --> 00:34:15.840
This the neurodiversity conversation is at a stage of maturity where people want to help, but in helping they're taking over and they're diminishing the ability of neurodivergent people to take responsibility for themselves, to be agent, to be empowered.
00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:20.079
So, on that, on the back of that, two points.
00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:30.719
What there are a number of managers who manage professionals in their team who would like to be able to do what you've just advised.
00:34:32.320 --> 00:34:33.440
However, there's a fear.
00:34:33.840 --> 00:34:34.159
There is.
00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:35.119
Okay.
00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:37.840
Now that's okay.
00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:42.480
How you address that and how you present yourself, that's how you deal with that.
00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:54.000
However, what do you say to a the managers in terms of dealing with these professionals who have identified as being neurodivergent?
00:34:54.400 --> 00:35:01.280
And also, second to that, from a company's perspective, what what would you advise to companies?
00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:09.360
You've already mentioned, for example, having coaches, but not all companies want to invest in professionals to support the business, to support the people.
00:35:09.760 --> 00:35:11.599
So, what would you say to that?
00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:15.440
No, well, I I am I know you've got plenty you can say.
00:35:15.599 --> 00:35:16.960
Yeah, I've got plenty I can say.
00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:31.920
Well, first of all, on the point of coaching and not wanting to invest, if you're in a very small business and you can't afford to provide coaching for your um neurodivergent or other other um otherwise disabled uh employees, that's what access to work is for.
00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:36.079
So access to work is a government-funded DWP program.
00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:43.840
Uh, you apply for support with adjustments that are unaffordable by your business.
00:35:44.079 --> 00:35:47.360
They'll give you a free assessment and they'll recommend things for you.
00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:50.480
Um, and then if your business is small enough, they'll pay for those things.
00:35:51.119 --> 00:35:52.960
So access to work does exist.
00:35:53.119 --> 00:36:05.840
And for people that are wondering what to do with their budget, what I would say to you is that the average coaching program comes in at less than a grand, and the average cost of rehiring is a heck of a lot more than a grand.
00:36:06.639 --> 00:36:37.360
And the the cost, it's all the hit, you know, it's it's a hard ask because you're comparing a direct cost with an indirect cost or a hidden cost, but the hidden cost sort of underperformance, the hidden cost not just to that person, but to their manager who's trying to cover up, or the rest of their team who's trying to cover up, what that does to relationships, to sense of what's fair and what's not fair, to trust, to honest communication and psychological safety within those teams, that's an issue.
00:36:37.519 --> 00:36:41.519
Now, for the want of a few hundred quid, we could pretty much solve that problem.
00:36:41.840 --> 00:36:46.639
Um, 95% of uh Genius Within's coaching clients keep their jobs.
00:36:46.800 --> 00:36:53.599
And I never want that to be 100%, because 5% of them leave because they should, they're in the wrong job, and that's actually a good outcome.
00:36:53.840 --> 00:37:00.320
If someone leaves elegantly because through coaching they've realized they're in the wrong job, I consider that a win.
00:37:00.639 --> 00:37:04.480
Um, and 25% of our clients get promoted within a year.
00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:10.719
Our NPS score for coaching is is 89%.
00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:17.760
I don't know if you know what an NPS score is, but that is like you know, 70% is considered world class.
00:37:17.920 --> 00:37:18.320
Yeah.
00:37:18.559 --> 00:37:23.360
So coaching works when it's done properly, it's not massively expensive.
00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:25.519
There you can invest in it.
00:37:25.679 --> 00:37:30.000
And and also there are a lot of managers that are naturally very good coaches.
00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:51.920
So those principles of coaching, um, I created a digital platform called the Genius Finder, which is a psychometric self-assessment of functional everyday work performance that lets you work out your spiky profile from a from an everyday perspective, not from an IQ perspective, but just from a what do I find easy, what do I find hard?
00:37:52.079 --> 00:38:01.599
And then in that platform are all the kind of coaching exercises, developmental tasks that I would give clients to help them develop that skill that they're missing.
00:38:01.760 --> 00:38:15.280
So I've created something that's quite affordable and accessible that you can work through on your own as a and or with a manager to kind of give those guardrails to managers of what they can and can't talk about, what they could and couldn't suggest.
00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:24.559
So I'm trying to sort of open that access because I do recognise that not everyone can afford coaching and not everyone can go through the paperwork of ADHD.
00:38:24.639 --> 00:38:28.559
But but I I think you know there's stuff out there, is what I'm saying.
00:38:28.719 --> 00:38:30.079
There's stuff out there.
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:48.239
You have served in many different types of positions from training manager, operations manager, director, section editor, writer, professor, managing director, chief science officer, CEO, founder?
00:38:51.599 --> 00:39:10.719
My question to you is with the world that you live in, the jobs day to day, how does Nancy hold herself accountable when diagnosed as being neurodivergent managing so many people?
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:14.320
How do I hold myself accountable?
00:39:19.119 --> 00:39:20.960
Lots of different ways, really.
00:39:21.119 --> 00:39:23.199
I don't I mean, I don't think we're ever finished.
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:24.880
We're always in process, right?
00:39:25.599 --> 00:39:27.039
You live in process.
00:39:27.679 --> 00:39:36.559
So I don't think there's ever been a point in my professional career where I wasn't in some sort of coaching and or therapy, you know?
00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:50.400
Um, and within my business, we've very much set it up in a kind of shared leadership style.
00:39:50.639 --> 00:40:00.480
So rather than one person being the boss and their word goes, there's a sense of this is more your sort of style issue.
00:40:00.639 --> 00:40:01.920
What do you think we should do here?
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:07.679
You know, so I'll just my my longest standing business partner is Fiona, and she's a very different personality to me.
00:40:08.079 --> 00:40:14.800
Fiona is someone who likes to take a long time over decisions, but once she's made a decision, she very rarely changes her mind.
00:40:15.039 --> 00:40:19.360
I make decisions very, very quickly, and I can change my mind quite quickly.
00:40:19.599 --> 00:40:26.880
So between us, what's happened is we've learned to respect each other's differences, and and I think that's the important thing.
00:40:27.039 --> 00:40:31.119
So, I mean, if anyone's gonna respect diversity of thought, it's gonna be me, right?
00:40:31.199 --> 00:40:32.639
So I've got to walk that talk.
00:40:32.880 --> 00:40:36.960
And that means respecting the fact that Fiona makes decisions very differently to me.
00:40:37.119 --> 00:40:41.679
When we first started working together, um, I would ask her a question and then she wouldn't get back to me.
00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:44.079
And I'd be like, come on, Fiona, I'll be chasing her.
00:40:44.639 --> 00:40:46.000
Um hi Fiona.
00:40:46.079 --> 00:40:48.079
Yeah, she knows this.
00:40:48.159 --> 00:40:49.519
I tell this anecdote all the time.
00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:51.440
Where are you, Fiona?
00:40:51.840 --> 00:41:06.239
Um, and and I learned that I had to give her space because if I didn't give her space, I wasn't gonna get the well-thought-through, well-reasoned um approach that I have come to love her for, you know.
00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:09.519
But what she also learned is to send me a holding message.
00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:13.360
So if I'd asked her a question, she'd be like, I'm gonna need to think on that.
00:41:13.519 --> 00:41:18.320
It's Friday, I will let you know on Monday, or it's Tuesday, I will let you know by the end of the week.
00:41:18.480 --> 00:41:25.119
And that would that would hold me, but it would also, and I would then be able to hold space for her.
00:41:25.760 --> 00:41:38.719
Um, conversely, if there's a crisis, I am the absolute best person for the job, and Fiona will trot along after me doing exactly what I say because I I think quickly enough for crisis response.
00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:48.079
So within the first two weeks of the pandemic, we had completely reorganised our business to from face-to-face coaching and assessments to online everything.
00:41:48.159 --> 00:41:56.079
Um, and I was busy lobbying the British Psychological Society to validate over the diagnostic assessments over the phone.
00:41:56.239 --> 00:42:05.199
So, you know, that there's there's strengths and challenges in the way that I operate, and there's strengths and challenges in the way that other people in my leadership team operate.
00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:11.440
And the important thing is that we build a diverse team and we recognise each other's strengths.
00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:14.239
We know what each other is good at and we respect that.
00:42:14.480 --> 00:42:22.400
And that's I think my main daily accountability is knowing that I'm I'm not surrounded by yes people.
00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:25.519
I'm surrounded by people that will tell me if I've gone too fast.
00:42:26.239 --> 00:42:27.119
How do you deal with that?
00:42:27.199 --> 00:42:28.880
How do you deal with the challenge?
00:42:29.119 --> 00:42:30.800
Um, I love being challenged.
00:42:30.960 --> 00:42:31.119
Okay.
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:33.119
Yeah, I'm really happy to be challenged.
00:42:33.280 --> 00:42:36.239
And I and I notice I notice my own responses.
00:42:36.559 --> 00:42:36.960
Do you know?
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:48.719
I can um I notice if I'm having a response that that means that I've got some drama about it, and I probably need to work that out before I make something happen.
00:42:48.880 --> 00:42:54.159
Um, I've learned the the power of writing the email and then not sending it until the next day.
00:42:54.400 --> 00:42:56.800
Um, those kind of things.
00:42:56.960 --> 00:42:59.039
But you know, that's that's personal development work.
00:42:59.199 --> 00:43:01.440
I think any any leader has to go through that stuff.
00:43:01.599 --> 00:43:09.679
Anybody in a leadership position has to do work on themselves because you you can't create psychological safety in a business if you haven't got it for yourself.
00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:20.480
You need to know your own boundaries, you need to know how you feel when your boundaries are transgressed and how you deal with that in an emotionally safe, non-dramery way.
00:43:20.639 --> 00:43:31.519
And you need to be able to execute that, and then you also need to know that you're not perfect and that sometimes you will fail on that, and that you can fess up and apologize and take accountability for that.
00:43:31.679 --> 00:43:34.400
So I think all leaders need to be good at that.
00:43:34.880 --> 00:43:35.519
Yes.
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:42.239
The um there's a lot of leaders who will try to hide mistakes.
00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:42.800
Oh, yeah.
00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:49.599
They want to feel that they're the person, they're the man, they're the woman, because I'm the CEO, because I'm the director.
00:43:51.519 --> 00:43:53.840
Well, we we're both aware it's out there.
00:43:54.079 --> 00:43:57.119
We are, we're some of your clients might be those people.
00:43:57.360 --> 00:43:58.000
Yeah.
00:43:58.480 --> 00:44:16.239
And They might listen to this conversation or hear you speak on many platforms and say, Well, look, it's easy for you because you've been in therapy, you've been in coaching, you've studied psycholog psychology from the age of 15.
00:44:16.559 --> 00:44:18.320
And it's been since before that.
00:44:18.639 --> 00:44:20.639
I was I was in therapy from 13.
00:44:21.360 --> 00:44:22.880
Right, from 13 onwards.
00:44:23.199 --> 00:44:28.159
You've been able to use tools to work on you.
00:44:28.880 --> 00:44:32.719
And then that evolves into the professional workplace.
00:44:32.880 --> 00:44:37.679
That evolves into your coaching practice, that evolves into you being the professor.
00:44:37.840 --> 00:44:42.719
That gives you a very different approach when writing for magazines on a global scale.
00:44:43.199 --> 00:44:52.800
What would you say to those people who have no idea about coaching, about using tools, about seeking help?
00:44:53.119 --> 00:44:54.239
Start somewhere.
00:44:54.400 --> 00:45:00.639
You know, you it's it's yeah, it's not about um it's a it's about being in process all the time.
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:02.639
It's about having that supervision group.
00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:06.239
There are plenty of free communities doing supervision work.
00:45:06.480 --> 00:45:23.119
My good friend, my good, good friend Whitney Isles, currently runs something called the Rebellious Practitioner, where she holds space for people that are practicing inclusion work, um uh anti-violent violence prevention work, uh, coaching, health work.
00:45:23.280 --> 00:45:28.719
Uh, and yeah, she holds a free book club where we we do, we we look at various works.
00:45:28.800 --> 00:45:32.159
We've just done a whole series on uh on trauma.
00:45:32.239 --> 00:45:36.960
Um, so we've read all of the big trauma books that are out there and debriefed them.
00:45:37.119 --> 00:45:39.440
Um so that's something I would recommend.
00:45:39.519 --> 00:45:43.519
The Rebellious Practitioner with Whitney Isles, man, that woman is gifted.
00:45:43.679 --> 00:45:58.880
Um, I also I wrote a book called Learning from Neurodivergent Leaders, which is a series of stories, not just of mine, but of other neurodivergent people in leadership positions, and it's got worksheets so you can do personal development for yourself within it.
00:45:59.039 --> 00:46:08.000
Um, so I think it's it's not about finding the best coach always or finding the right therapist, it's it's just it's about having that mindset.
00:46:08.159 --> 00:46:09.360
What can I learn about myself?
00:46:09.519 --> 00:46:10.960
How can I be more self-aware?
00:46:11.119 --> 00:46:13.199
How can I get these corners rubbed off?
00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:24.639
Um when I when I started training coaches, one of my first gigs actually as an occupational psychologist was training uh people who were going to be unemployment support workers.
00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:36.639
So, in the very first New Deal for unemployed people back in 2002, um, under the Blair Brown government, um I was part of those for those first contracts.
00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:47.840
And so I hired a bunch of of people who would would be working with unemployed people in um Hammersmith and anyway, across London.
00:46:48.079 --> 00:47:03.840
And we used to, we used to we used to say that the most important thing is is rapport because in any therapeutic alliance, any therapeutic interaction, the the power of the of the relationship is what creates the most impact in terms of change.
00:47:04.239 --> 00:47:06.079
So you have to be able to build rapport.
00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:10.960
So we used to say to people, go and build rapport with who would you find it hard to build rapport with?
00:47:11.039 --> 00:47:13.119
Go and build rapport with one person like that.
00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:19.119
We had we had this one woman who um said that she she was a bit frightened of homeless people.
00:47:19.280 --> 00:47:20.880
That was something she would find hard.
00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:24.639
If she had a client who was homeless, she she doesn't know how she would handle that.
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:32.960
So we were all righty, your developmental task overnight before we you come back tomorrow is to strike up a conversation with a homeless person.
00:47:33.199 --> 00:47:34.880
Only has to be one or two sentences.
00:47:35.119 --> 00:47:42.559
So she leaves the session, um, she goes to the bus stop, and there's a guy selling the big big issue right next to the bus stop.
00:47:42.719 --> 00:47:44.639
So she's like, right, this is my moment.
00:47:45.119 --> 00:47:48.719
And one bus comes past, her bus comes and it goes past, she leaves it.
00:47:48.800 --> 00:47:50.159
She still hasn't built up the courage.
00:47:50.320 --> 00:47:53.280
She stands there a bit longer, another one of her buses passed.
00:47:53.360 --> 00:47:55.360
She leaves it, she doesn't build up the courage.
00:47:55.519 --> 00:48:01.119
She finally builds up the courage and goes and buys a copy of the big issue and strikes up a conversation with this person.
00:48:01.360 --> 00:48:05.599
It turns out that was his first day selling the big issue, and he has been doing the same thing.
00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:10.880
He has been stood there trying to build up the courage to ask her to buy a copy of the big issue.
00:48:11.119 --> 00:48:11.760
I know.
00:48:12.079 --> 00:48:16.079
So I just feel like the most important thing is that mindset.
00:48:16.159 --> 00:48:22.400
And the way you get your corners rubbed off is by working with building rapport with people who are not like you.
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:24.000
That's how you do it.
00:48:24.159 --> 00:48:24.400
Yeah.
00:48:24.559 --> 00:48:24.800
Yeah.
00:48:25.039 --> 00:48:29.920
You've got to find, you know, my my thing with all my clients when I'm coaching is I've got to find something.
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:32.000
What's the thing that I love about this person?
00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:34.639
And where is the thing that they love?
00:48:34.719 --> 00:48:36.320
Those are the two things I'm always looking for.
00:48:36.480 --> 00:48:47.519
I'm looking for the spark in someone's eye when they start talking about something in their work or something in their life that they suddenly change their posture, their face lights up.
00:48:47.679 --> 00:48:49.519
Because that right there, that's their career.
00:48:49.760 --> 00:48:50.719
And I need to find it.
00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:52.639
I need to find that that magic seed.
00:48:53.519 --> 00:48:56.880
And um and what's the thing I love about them?
00:48:56.960 --> 00:49:00.159
You know, what is it that they can do that's so uniquely them?
00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:03.760
So I think I think that's the most important thing that you do.
00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:19.519
That find people to work with that are not like you, learn because that's you will learn doing that, and have a safe sounding board space where you can take stuff so that you don't spill your emotional bucket over everybody that you're working with.
00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:31.440
Well, listen, Nancy, thank you for coming on and speaking to me and shedding some light into your world and your life, your upbringing, your advice, your insights.
00:49:32.159 --> 00:49:40.239
Um my last question to you very quickly You're at a significant stage in life where it looks like things are thriving.
00:49:40.960 --> 00:49:45.119
What's next for for yourself and for the genius within?
00:49:47.840 --> 00:49:50.000
That's a big question right now.
00:49:50.480 --> 00:49:54.159
Um I don't know if I can give that in a short answer.
00:49:54.320 --> 00:50:03.760
Um, I was actually feeling really burned out at the end of last year because of how difficult things have become in the DEI space, the the kind of sense of backlash.
00:50:03.840 --> 00:50:05.920
It is it's like a heavy cloak, isn't it, right now?
00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:10.239
It's a heavy, heavy cloak that we are wearing and carrying when we work in this space.
00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:12.559
And I was feeling quite burned out.
00:50:12.719 --> 00:50:14.480
And um I had this conversation.
00:50:14.639 --> 00:50:17.199
My husband is like, my husband is so funny.
00:50:17.280 --> 00:50:18.400
I love him to death.
00:50:18.480 --> 00:50:26.320
Uh, he is the yin to my yang, and um, he is the kind of person who's been putting the recommended amount into a pension plan since he was 22 years old.
00:50:26.559 --> 00:50:27.199
God love him.
00:50:27.599 --> 00:50:29.760
Obviously, I have not, I'm not that person.
00:50:29.920 --> 00:50:41.920
Um, but um, so he was he had a financial advisor come round to talk to him about his pension, and he they were saying, you know, well, actually, you know, you could feasibly retire at 57 if you wanted to really lower your standard of living.
00:50:42.079 --> 00:50:47.199
And then the guy looked at me and said, If if your husband was retired, what would you do?
00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:49.360
And I just simply hadn't thought about that.
00:50:49.519 --> 00:50:50.480
I hadn't thought about it.
00:50:50.559 --> 00:50:55.199
But even though I hadn't thought about it, I came out with this ferociously passionate answer.
00:50:55.360 --> 00:50:59.360
And as it was, as the words were coming out of my mouth, I was like, Oh my god, that's true.
00:50:59.519 --> 00:51:02.159
I'm not burned out, I'm not burned out at all.
00:51:02.400 --> 00:51:18.320
So, um, so what of what I actually said was, oh my God, if Dan retires and all he's doing is pottering round the house, knowing where my passport is and ironing things, oh my god, I would have a second career, I would take over the world, I would run 10, I would write 10 books.
00:51:18.480 --> 00:51:21.280
And then I went, oh, that's true.
00:51:21.840 --> 00:51:23.360
I'm not done yet.
00:51:23.679 --> 00:51:30.159
So since that meeting, I've been planning what my what my next moves are, and you'll just have to wait and see.
00:51:30.880 --> 00:51:31.920
There we go.
00:51:32.400 --> 00:51:34.079
Nancy, thank you so much.
00:51:34.159 --> 00:51:37.280
I look forward to seeing what the plans will be.
00:51:37.840 --> 00:51:40.000
I look forward to seeing you on the main stage.
00:51:40.159 --> 00:51:50.000
I look forward to reading more of your articles, and I look forward as well to eventually seeing you at a music venue somewhere soon when we're breaking in our shoes together.
00:51:50.639 --> 00:51:51.760
But thank you so much.
00:51:52.239 --> 00:51:53.039
Thank you for having me.
00:51:53.440 --> 00:51:54.000
Take care.
